Lake George (con’t)

I was at bat, glass-eyed with a millisecond vision of stepping into a deep swing that pulverized Paul Tucker’s mouth in a spray of blood and broken teeth, but all I could do was blink. We knew the psycho stories. We’d seen him wail on so many kids. First he’d hammer-punch you on the chest, making you wheeze and crumble, then he’d kneel on you and alternate swooping slaps to your face, extending each wiry arm like a loon’s wing before it came down. If you tried to shove him off, he’d hook a real punch in your gut, not as hard as he could, which made you more nauseous than it hurt.

He hurled the ball toward the drainage creek at the far side of the field, an impressive throw, where it landed with a faint splash.

“Faggots.”

Paul Tucker wasn’t that much bigger. He wasn’t that much older. But he owned summer.

The next week Paul Tucker was sitting on top of a trash can with his feet on the seat of his bike when we came out from buying soda and candy at the gas station. He went after Pelka because Pelka was fat and cried the easiest, and because he knew we wouldn’t do a thing to stop him. Pelka was useless, with crooked teeth, wearing ink-blue Toughskins even on the hottest days The desperate kid who tried too hard to keep up with the group. Who let us into his house to eat everything and play his Atari. It was actually impressive how much shit he took from us. The put-downs. The dogpiles. The bags of Doritos and cans of soda we’d just take at his house. He’d force himself to laugh and ask when he could have a turn.

He went pale as soon as he saw Paul Tucker. He looked at us with desperate eyes even as we all stepped away.

Paul Tucker jackknifed off the trash can, letting his bike topple, and snatched the paper bag from Pelka’s hands. It ripped open, sending packages of candy flying. When Pelka scrambled to pick it up, Paul Tucker kicked it into the parking lot with a spray of shiny plastic, grabbing some packets and tearing some open to eat and spilling some out on the concrete to stomp into little rounds of pink and green powder.

“Homo.”

Pelka was trying not to cry, stooped over the pavement, two inches of chalk-white asscrack glaring above his Toughskins, snuffing and choking and trying to salvage his candy. The rest of us stayed back, dressed out in a semicircle around the assault, each numb with relief that it wasn’t us. Whenever Paul Tucker was beating up some other kid, you loved him for not beating up on you. It was when the danger passed, when the trouble was over, that we could all hate Paul Tucker again.