Bruiser

1) SYMBIOSIS

If he touches her, I swear I’m going to rip out his guts with my bare hands and send them to his next of kin for lunch.

What is my sister thinking? This guy—this looooser—has got no business breathing the same air as her, much less taking her out on a date. Just because he asked doesn’t mean she has to accept.

“Are you afraid that if you say no, he’ll bury you in his backyard or something?” I ask the question over dinner, while I’m still steaming from the news.

My sister, Brontë, gives me a look that says Excuse me, but I can take care of myself, and she says, “Excuse me, but I can take care of myself.” She learned that look from our mother, God rest her soul. I give Brontë back a look that says I think not, and I say, “You gonna eat that piece of pizza?”

Brontë peels off the cheese, throws it on Dad’s plate, and eats the bread. She’s on a high-carb diet, which basically means she eats everything that Dad can’t on his low-carb diet. It makes them part of an evolved symbiotic relationship. That’s science. Just because I’m an athlete doesn’t mean I don’t have brains.

Mom, God rest her soul, is still on the phone. She’s negotiating with the next-door neighbor, hoping to get him to stop mowing his lawn at seven AM on Sunday morning. I don’t know why she needs the phone; we can hear the other end of the conversation through the window. In order to get to the point, Mom has to strategically weave around the field, breaking down the neighbor’s defenses by talking gossip and being generally friendly. You know—lulling the guy into a false sense of security before going in for the kill. It’s such an all-important conversation that Mom had to order a pizza rather than cook. She also had to order it online, since she was already on the phone.

Mom doesn’t cook anymore. She does nothing much motherly or wifely anymore since Dad did some unmentionables during his midlife crisis. Brontë and I have become convinced that Mom, God rest her soul, kind of died inside and hasn’t come back from the dead yet. We keep waiting, but all we get is Domino’s.

“I’m sixteen,” Brontë says. “I can spend time with whoever I want.”

“As your older brother, it’s my sacred duty to save you from yourself.”

She brings her fists down on the table, making all the dinner plates jump. “The ONLY reason you’re fifteen minutes older than me is because you cut in front of the line, as usual!”

I turn to our father, searching for an ally. “So Dad, is it legal for Brontë to date out of her species?”

Dad looks up from his various layers of pepperoni and breadless cheese. “Date?” he says. Apparently the idea of Brontë dating is like an electromagnet sucking away all other words in the sentence, so that’s the only word he hears.

“You’re not funny,” Brontë says to me.

“No, I’m serious,” I tell her. “Isn’t he like… a Sasquatch or something?”

“Date?” says Dad.

“Just because he’s big,” Brontë points out, “that doesn’t mean he’s apelike; and anyway, you’re the lowest primate in our zip code, Tennyson.”

“Admit it—this guy is just one more stray dog for you!”

Brontë growls at me, like one of the near-rabid creatures she used to bring home on a regular basis. Our house used to be a revolving doggy door, until Mom and Dad put their feet down and we became fish people.

“Is this a boy we know?” Dad asks.

Brontë sighs and gnaws her cheeseless pizza in frustration.

“His name is Brewster Rawlins, and he is nothing like what people say about him.”

This is not the way to introduce your father to a prospective boyfriend, and I figure maybe Dad might be terrified enough to forbid her to date him.

“Exactly what do people say about him?” Dad asks. Dad always begins sentences with the word exactly when he suspects he doesn’t want to hear the answer. I snicker, knowing that Brontë is stuck; and she punches me on the shoulder.

What do they say about the Bruiser? I think. What don’t they say? “Let’s see…in eighth grade he was voted Most Likely to Receive the Death Penalty.”

“He’s quiet,” says Brontë. “He’s inscrutable, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. You know what they say: Still waters run deep—”

“—and are full of missing persons.” Brontë hits me on the shoulder again. “Next time,” she says, “I’ll use your lacrosse stick.”

“Inscrutable…,” Dad says, mulling over the word.

“It means ‘hard to understand,’” shouts Mom from across the room as if he didn’t know. Mom never passes up a good opportunity to make Dad look stupid.

“Your mother,” grumbles Dad, “knows full well that inscrutable was one of my words.”

“Nope,” says Mom, “it was one of mine.”

They’re referring to the vocabulary curse Brontë and I have been under since kindergarten. Mom and Dad alternate in force-feeding us one power word every day, which we are expected to swallow without vomiting. That’s what you get when both of your parents are professors of literature. That, and being named after dead writers. Very aberrant, if you ask me (Mom’s word). As teachers, however, they should have realized that Tennyson Sternberger would not fit on a Scantron.

“The Bruiser comes from a screwed-up family,” I tell Dad. “They’re a bunch of nut jobs.”

“Oh,” says Brontë, “and we’re not dysfunctional?”

“Only your father,” says Mom. “But apparently he’s taken care of it.”

Mom could have been a great sniper if she had chosen that line of work. Every time she gets off a nice one, it gives me hope that her soul might be reviving.

As for the Bruiser, he has no mother. No father either. No one knows what the deal is there. All people know is that he lives with his uncle and an eight-year-old brother who looks like he’s being raised by wolves. And this is the family Brontë wants to date into. My sister obviously was never visited by the common sense fairy.

“Exactly when were you planning to see this boy?” Dad asks.

“He’s taking me miniature golfing on Saturday afternoon.”

“Real high-class,” I say.

“You shut up!”

And I do, because now I know everything I need to know about her so-called date.

2) CONSOLATION

I take my girlfriend, Katrina, to play miniature golf Saturday afternoon. Is it coincidence, or is it design? You tell me.

“Must we?” she asks when I suggest it.

“We must,” I answer, and offer no further explanation. Her hatred of miniature golf, I think, is born of the fact that her father golfed away her entire childhood instead of spending it at home. I suppose Wackworld Miniature Golf Emporium is a reminder of those dark times.

“It’s a happy place,” I tell her. “You can’t hate Wackworld; it’s like hating Disneyland.”

“I hate Disneyland,” she says, although she won’t tell me why. Actually, I’m afraid to find out.

“Okay, I’ll go,” she tells me, “as long as we don’t keep score.” And since my motives have nothing to do with golfing competition, I agree.

“You’re paying, right?” Katrina asks. “Because I will not pay money to hit a ball with a stick.”

I tell her that I’ll pay, but she really didn’t need to ask because I always pay. Katrina’s very old-school when it comes to dating. The guy always pays, and holds doors for her, and pulls out chairs. I actually kind of like it; it’s cool pretending to be a gentleman.

Katrina and I had begun as what you might call a consolation couple. In other words, she really wanted to go out with my friend Andy Beaumont, and I really wanted to go out with her friend Stacy VerMoot. But Andy and Stacy found each other, and have since become surgically attached at the hip. That left Katrina and me as each other’s consolation prize. As I had just dislocated my shoulder and Katrina wants to be a nurse, it all just popped into place.

“Life,” my father had once said, “is all about settling.” Unfortunately, he’d said that right in front of Mom, who proceeded to serve him a peanut butter and onion sandwich for dinner that night.

“Life is all about settling,” she reminded him as she slipped the plate in front of him. His response had been to eat the whole horrific sandwich out of spite, then catch her unawares with a big, slobbery, peanut butter and onion kiss. After that they didn’t speak to each other for about a day and a half. I swear, parents can be such children.

I meet Katrina at her house, and we walk to Wackworld, since buses in our corner of suburbia don’t go anywhere but to some place called the Transportation Center, where you can catch a dozen other buses that don’t go anywhere. Since I’m still not old enough for a license, my only choices are bike, parental taxi, or my own two feet. Katrina always prefers walking, because it provides us with an opportunity to talk. Actually, it provides her with an opportunity to talk and me with the opportunity to listen. The only time those roles reverse is after a lacrosse game, when you can’t shut me up.

“…so for the entirety of math class,” Katrina continues, “Miss Markel has one of her false eyelashes dangling half on, half off her left eye, like a caterpillar; and the whole class is watching and waiting for the thing to drop….”

I don’t mind her stories anymore. When we first started going out, I would zone out when she got into it; but as time went on, I got used to it and actually found that I enjoyed listening.

“…I don’t know why she wears false lashes; I guess it must be a generational thing, like the way some women pluck out their eyebrows, then paint on fake ones, or like foot binding in India—”

“China.”

“Right, and I think she wears a wig, too. So anyway, she finally turns her head real fast and off the eyelash flies, and where does it land? Right on the head of Ozzy O’Dell—who had just shaved all his body hair for swimming, including his head; and since the thing still has a little glue, it sticks there on top of his scalp, like a teeny-tiny Mohawk, and he doesn’t even know….”

The thing about Katrina is that her voice is kind of hypnotic, like a spiritual chant in some foreign language.

“…so tell me, how was I supposed to focus on a math quiz with Mini-Mohawk Ozzy sitting in front of me, the thing flapping in the breeze from the open window?”

“Did Markel ever notice it?”

“Yeah, like five minutes before the end of class she saw it, quietly plucked it from his head, then slipped it into her desk drawer, thinking no one saw, even though everyone did—but by then it was too late to get my quiz done, so the whole thing was a crash and burn of epic proportions, and all because of a stupid fake eyelash.” Katrina’s life is very dramatic. Maybe my sister thinks that by going out with the Bruiser she’ll have drama, too; but I know guys better than she knows guys, and knowing that guy, I think she’s in for something more in the horror genre.

3) COERCION

The entrance to Wackworld Miniature Golf Emporium is marked with a massive sign all done in bright red letters on a very serious black background. The sign warns of all the activities that are not allowed. Every few months a new item gets added as visitors come up with amazing new activities to threaten life, limb, and property. Any time I go there, I make a point of reading the sign to find out what new things have been added. Here are my personal favorites:

I am proud to say that I was responsible for the addition of that last one a few years back.

As we enter through the gate, I scan the rolling hills of concrete and artificial turf until finding Brontë and the Bruiser. They’re on hole three but have moved on to hole four by the time Katrina negotiates herself an acceptable club and demands a red ball from the ball shack geek.

“Why red?” I ask.

“Easier to spot,” she says. “Besides, red is the new black.”

“I thought pink was the new black.”

“Yes, but red is the new pink.”

I point at my shirt. “What does that say for green?”

“It only gets worse for green.” Then she hits her ball; it smacks the windmill blade and comes flying back at us.

“I hate windmills,” says Katrina.

“You and Don Quixote.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” I suffer the constant scourge of literary parents. Thank God I’m good at sports, or I might have been pegged early in life and beaten up in hallways. Life is cruel.

We putt our way through the first hole. Just ahead of us, a slow-moving family allows us to play through. I get a hole in one, and that speeds us along. Now Brontë and the Bruiser are only two holes ahead.

“Hey,” says Katrina, “isn’t that your sister?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess it is.”

“Who’s that she’s with?”

I just shrug and continue playing. We both make a quick par three, and we’ve closed the gap down to one hole.

Up ahead, Brontë has spotted me. I give her a grin and a little wave. She sends me back a chilly glare that could end global warming.

“Hi, Brontë,” Katrina says as we finally intercept them.

“What a surprise!” I say.

“Yeah,” grumbles Brontë, “some surprise.”

I look at the Bruiser—this is the first time I’ve ever been this close to him. He’s big. Not just big but hulking. At sixteen he’s got all this goat hair under his chin and wispy sideburns. His hair is dark, and neglected. You can tell he tried to comb it, but you can also tell he gave up halfway through. He looks like a vagrant in training. I hate him. I hate the concept of him. He’s a freight train of bad news barreling at my sister.

“Hey, can we join you guys,” Katrina asks, “and make it a foursome?”

The Bruiser shrugs like he doesn’t care; and Brontë throws up her hands, giving up all hope of getting rid of me. “Sure,” she says miserably, “why not.”

“You haven’t introduced me to your friend,” I say, all daisies and sunshine.

Brontë looks like she might become physically ill. “Brewster, this is my brother, Tennyson. Tennyson, this is Brewster.”

“Hey,” says the Bruiser, shaking my hand. His eyes are an ugly pea green, and his huge hand is greasy, the way your hand gets after you’ve eaten a bag of chips. After shaking, I wipe my hand on my pants. He notices. I’m glad.

Katrina narrows her eyes at him, studying him. “I’ve got a class with you, haven’t I?” She knows the Bruiser but just doesn’t recognize him out of his natural environment. “English,” he says in a dead, flat voice. This guy is the king of one-word answers—probably all his brain can hold at one time. He sets for his shot. It’s almost comical; his golf club is much too small for him, as is his shirt—either he outgrew it, or it shrunk a few sizes after he got it. The overall effect is very Winnie- the-Pooh, without the pot belly or cuteness. He hits the ball too hard, it bounces off the course, and it gets swallowed by a topiary hedge shaped like a walrus.

“Tough break,” I say. “That’ll cost ya.”

“It’s only a game,” he grumbles, then lumbers off in search of his ball. Katrina smacks her next ball and follows it to the far end of the hole, leaving me alone with Brontë, who gets in my face the second Katrina is out of earshot.

“You are going to pay for this in the worst way!” Brontë snarls. “I haven’t figured out how; but when I do, you will suffer.”

I look toward the walrus bush. “I think your date was distracted by something shiny. I’d better go help him find his ball.” I saunter off, leaving her fuming.

He’s around the other side of the huge walrus bush, fighting pine branch flippers to get at his ball, poking the club into the shrub. I get in there right beside him, force my way deep into the branches, and snatch up his ball. I hold it out to him, and he reaches for it; but instead of giving it to him, I grab him by his shirt, pulling him close to me, and I hiss in his face.

“I don’t care what you think is going on between you and my sister, but it’s not happening, comprende? My sister doesn’t know what you’re all about, but I do.”

He looks at me with dumb hate in his swampy eyes but says nothing.

“Am I getting through that rock skull of yours, or do I have to pound it in through your ears?”

“Get your hands off me.”

I grip his shirt a little harder. I think maybe I’ve got some chest hairs in there, but he doesn’t show the pain. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“I said, Get your stinking hands off me or I’m gonna find a new use for this golf club.”

That’s just the kind of thing I’m expecting to hear from a guy like this. I don’t let him go. “Let’s see what use you’ve got in mind,” I say. He doesn’t do anything. I didn’t think he would. Finally I let him go. “Stay away from my sister,” I tell him.

He grabs the ball from my hand and strides back to Brontë. “I don’t feel like playing anymore,” he says, and stalks off with Brontë hurrying behind him. She throws me a gaze of pure, unadulterated hatred, and I wave. My mission of coercion is accomplished.

Katrina, who did not care for the way she played this hole, claims herself a do over. She comes up beside me and watches the retreat of my sister and the Swamp Thang. “Where are they going?”

“Their separate ways,” I say. Katrina swings, and her ball bounces up, wedging in the miniature girders of the Eiffel Tower.

“I hate the Eiffel Tower,” she says, and I smile at her, secretly relishing my victory.

Sometimes you have to take control of a situation. Sometimes you have to be the dominant force; otherwise chaos becomes law. I mean, look at lacrosse. This is a game that started as Native American warfare, with warriors breaking their enemies’ bones with their sticks as they carried the ball for miles. Even soccer was played with human heads once upon a time. It took the brute force of civilization to tame all that into lawful competition. But one look at the Bruiser and you know that there’s nothing lawful about him. The fact that Brontë can’t see that scares me, because there will come a time when I can’t protect her…and what if someday she finds out the hard way about guys who still see life as head-kicking warfare. You hear stories all the time.

So hate me all you want, Brontë, for what I did here; but that will pass—and someday, if we’re lucky, we’ll both look back at this day and you’ll say “Thank you, Tenny, for caring enough to protect me from the big and the bad.”

4) REVELATION

Brontë comes into my room that night, grabs me by the shoulders, and pushes me back onto my bed so hard, my head hits the wall.

“Ow!”

“You’re pond scum!” she says to me.

I don’t deny the charge, but sometimes pond scum prevails.

“What did you say to him behind the walrus?” she asks.

“I read him his Miranda rights,” I told her. “He has the right to remain silent; he has the right to find some other girl to drool over—y’ know, the normal things you’d say to a criminal.”

“He’s never been arrested!” she said. “Those are just stories made up by idiots like you. He’s just misunderstood; but I, for one, am making the effort to understand him. He will not give in to your threats; and I will not stop seeing him, no matter how much bullying you do!”

That makes me laugh. “Bullying? Give me a break.”

“It’s true, Tennyson! You’re a bully. You’ve always been a bully.”

“Says who?” I immediately imagine punching out anyone who might call me a bully, and then realize that my own thoughts are proving Brontë’s point, which just makes me want to punch someone even more. This is what we call a vicious cycle, and I don’t feel all that good about it. I never thought of myself as a bully; and although this isn’t the first such accusation, it’s the first one that breaks through my defenses and hits home. Suddenly I realize that maybe, in some people’s eyes, I am. This is what we call a revelation. Revelations are never convenient, and always annoying.

“Stay away from Brewster!” she warns me, then she turns to leave; but I don’t let her go.

“I get it, okay?” I tell her. She lingers by the door. “He’s the first boy you like who likes you back, so it feels kind of special. I get it.”

She turns to me, some of her steam cooling in the kettle. “He’s not the first,” she says. “Just the first in my adult life.”

I find it funny that we’re the same age, give or take a quarter of an hour, and yet she considers herself an adult.

“Be careful, Brontë… because you have to admit, this guy is kind of… beneath you.”

She looks at me before she leaves, sadly shaking her head. “You be careful, Tenny. Being a snob can make a person very, very ugly.”

5) FACTOIDS

I never considered myself a bully. I never considered myself a snob. But then, who does? There’s a way to objectively analyze it. All you have to do is look at the facts.

Fact #1) I’m reasonably smart. I’m no genius, but I get good grades without ever having to try. It really ticks off the kids who have to study their brains out to make the grade. It’s not like I brag about it, but my mere existence is enough to breed resentment in certain circles.

Fact # 2) I’m coordinated. Not my fault either, I just came that way. It made it easier for me to excel at sports when I was a kid and to build the skills to be a contender in quite a few of them.

Fact #3) I’m reasonably decent looking. I’m no pretty boy, and I don’t have six-pack abs or anything; but when it comes to looks, confidence counts for a lot, and I’m nothing if not confident. Between you and me, I think I project a lot better looking than I actually am.

Fact #4) We’re not exactly hurting for money. We’re by no means rich, but we don’t go hungry either. Both Mom and Dad have tenure at the university and pull in decent salaries. They drive modest but respectable cars, and I suspect that when Brontë and I start driving, we’ll both get our own modest but respectable cars.

So, does all this make me a snob? Is it wrong for me to think that the Bruiser, with his creepy family and slimy ways, is somehow lower than me? Yes, it does make you a snob, I hear Brontë’s voice telling me in my head. It does, Tennyson, because there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There’s a fine line between being assertive and being a bully. And you’re on the wrong side of both lines.

We’re not telepathic twins or anything, but sometimes I wonder because once in a while I have fictional conversations with her. It irks me that, even in my imagination, she can always, always have the last word.

6) DECIMATED

I don’t know where my head is at on Monday. Maybe it’s because I feel a little bit guilty for being so mean to the Bruiser. Anyway, I do my best to suspend judgment on him; and, for Brontë’s sake, I try to keep an open mind.

It’s not until the end of the day that I run into him in the most awkward and uncomfortable of situations.

I’m early into the locker room for lacrosse practice, and he’s just getting done with PE. He’s the last kid there—apparently he doesn’t dress with the other kids; he waits until the rest of them are gone.

The instant I see him, I know why.

The first thing I see is his back. It’s enough to scare anyone. There’s damage there, strange damage. It’s impossible to tell what has caused it. Scars and pockmarks; discolorations; a big bruise on his shoulder, yellowed around the edges. His back is decimated, like the cratered surface of the moon.

I just stand there staring. He slips on his shirt, not even knowing that I’m there. Then he turns around and catches me watching him. He knows I’ve seen his back. I stare for a moment too long.

“What do you want?” he asks without looking me in the eye.

I want to match his nasty tone, but I know I have to curb my bully/snob factor. Letting something like that run unchecked will turn you into a creep. My one saving grace is that true creeps don’t ever know they are; and if I’m worried about becoming one, maybe it means I won’t. The only thing I can think of to say is “So what kind of name is Brewster? Were you named after someone?”

He looks at me like it’s a trick question. “What do you care?”

“I don’t. I’m just wondering.”

He doesn’t answer me; he just puts on his jacket: a beat-up leather bomber that looks like it has actually seen several generations of war. Still, the scars on the jacket are nothing compared to what I saw on his back. “Cool jacket,” I say. “Where’d you get it?”

“Thrift store,” he answers.

I hold back the urge to say “It figures,” and instead I just say, “Cool.” He stands facing me now, shoulders squared. Gunslinger position. It’s a stance that says “C’mon, I dare you.” He doesn’t trust me, but that’s just fine. I don’t trust him either. I can’t even say I dislike him any less; but now I’m curious and worried, and not just for Brontë but maybe a little bit for him, too. Who could do things like that to his body and get away with it, especially to a guy as big as him?

“So, what is it you want?” he asks, “because I got things to do.”

“Who says I want anything?” That’s when I realize that I’m in gunslinger position, too, blocking his way out. I step aside to let him pass. I think he expects me to trip him, or kick him or something. I wonder if he’s disappointed when I don’t.

“My great-grandfather,” he says as he passes. “That’s who I was named after.”

And he’s gone, just as a bunch of kids from my lacrosse team enter.

7) RECEPTACLE

Our parents never spanked us. They come from the brave new world of time-out and positive reinforcement.

I’ve always been a very physical kid, though, always using my fists or my body as a battering ram. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been hauled into the principal’s office for fighting. I’ve given my share of black eyes and bloody noses and gotten my share of them as well—and playing lacrosse, well, there’s never a time when I don’t have some bruise on my body, somewhere.

But the kind of things I saw on the Bruiser made his nickname hit home for me. None of those marks could be explained away innocently. He didn’t get that way from fighting, or from sports. He got that way from being the human receptacle of someone else’s brutality.

8) OBTUSE

Mom teaches a class on nineteenth-century realism on Monday nights, so that’s Dad’s night to not cook. He orders fast food just as skillfully as Mom does. The three of us sit at the dinner table eating KFC on flimsy paper plates with plastic sporks. Whoever invented the spork should be killed. Dad peels the breading from his chicken and gives it to Brontë, allowing her to savor all eleven herbs and spices that make it so finger-lickin’ good.

“I saw the Bruiser today,” I tell Brontë as we eat. “Brewster, I mean.”

“And how did you torment him?” she snaps.

I don’t take the bait. Instead I say, “It was in the locker room. He had his shirt off.” I take a bite of my chicken, chew, and swallow. “Have you ever seen him with his shirt off?”

Dad looks up from his skinless chicken and talks with his mouth full. “Exactly why would she have seen him with his shirt off?”

“Oh, puh-lease!” she says to him. “Let’s not get out the heart paddles, Dad; he’s never been bare chested in my presence.” Now Brontë turns her attention to me, studying me, trying to figure out what sinister maneuver I’m working here. The truth is, I’m just curious as to what she knows, or at least what she suspects.

“Why would you ask that question?” she says; but since I don’t know any more than what I saw, I don’t want to tell her.

“Never mind,” I say, “it’s not important.” I try unsuccessfully to scrape the last of the mashed potatoes from the bottom of the Styrofoam cup with my spork.

“You are so obtuse!” Brontë says, exasperated.

I am calm in my response. “Do you mean stupid, or angular? You need to be more specific with your insults.”

“Jerk!”

“No thanks,” I tell her. “I much prefer the Colonel’s seasonings to Jamaican spice.”

It probably would be in my best interests to leave Brontë alone for the rest of the night and not push things, but I can’t do that. After dinner I go up to Brontë’s room. Her door is open, but still I knock timidly. I’m never timid, but tonight I am. Brontë must notice because she looks up at me from her homework, and her standard expression of annoyance changes. Now she looks curious, maybe even a little concerned, because she asks, “What’s wrong?”

I shrug. “Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you about Brewster.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Brontë says.

“I know,” I say to her, “but I think you should listen.”

She crosses her arms, clearly ready to dismiss anything I say.

“You know where he lives, right?” I ask.

“He lives in a house,” Brontë says, “just like we do.”

“And have you met his family? His uncle, I mean, the one he lives with?”

“Where are you going with this?” Brontë asks.

“Does he talk about his uncle?”

“No,” says Brontë.

“Maybe you should ask him.” Then I leave it in her hands and turn to go; but when I glance back, I can see her staring at her homework, pencil in hand but doing no work. Good. She’s thinking about it. I don’t know what she’ll do, but she’s thinking about it. I don’t even know what I want her to do.

9) DETERIORATING

Our neighborhood has the distinction of being one of the fastest-growing planned communities in the state. Look at an empty field, now blink; and when you open your eyes, there’s a whole housing development there. Blink again; this time there’s a new mall right next to it. I can imagine farmers staring, bewildered, at a jungle of pink stucco and red-tile roofs, wondering how their cornfield became a subdivision while they weren’t looking. In reality those farmers sold their plots of land for ridiculous prices and made out like bandits, so I can’t feel sorry for them. But then there are whole plots of land where the owners held out for more money and missed the boat.

The Bruiser lives in such a place. It had once been a small farm, but it hadn’t been cultivated for a long time. Crops had long ago given way to a wild field of weedy brush, a deteriorating eyesore amid the perfectly manicured lawns of our little neighborhood.

There’s a bull on the property, old and a little too tired to be cranky. It seems to serve no purpose, not even to itself. Occasionally kids will torment it on the way to school. It’ll snort, make like it’s going to charge the fence, and then give up, realizing that it’s not worth the effort. I imagine the Bruiser is somewhat like that bull.

The day I follow the Bruiser home is the day the bull dies.

10) INTERCESSION

I’m not exactly what you would call stealthy, but the Bruiser isn’t all that observant either, so I’m able to follow him all the way home. I don’t know what I expect to find, but curiosity is rarely rational. Besides, it’s easy to tell myself that it’s more than just curiosity. It’s what lawyers call “due diligence”— necessary research—and I’m not even doing it for myself; it’s for Brontë’s sake, although if she knew I was tailing her boyfriend, she’d rip me a new digestive tract.

Even though I know where he lives, I want to observe what he does. Are there other kids he meets up with on the way home? A drug dealer, maybe? I promise myself I won’t jump to any conclusions, but I keep my eyes open for anything out of the ordinary.

He makes no contact with anyone today. He’s a true loner, deep in his own thoughts, whatever they might be. He glances behind him once; but we’re separated by a few groups of other kids, keeping me camouflaged. Although I have my lacrosse stick with me, I keep it low, because if he spots that, it’ll draw his attention and he’ll see that I’m the one holding it.

His property—about an acre—is surrounded by a tall chain-link fence, and an alley runs beside the fence like a concrete moat separating modern suburbia from the weedy little patch of uncultivated farmland. Across the alley is a strip mall, complete with a supermarket, an ice-cream shop, a Hallmark, and a place called Happi Nails, where I assume women go to make their nails happy. Dumpsters stand in the alley up against the Bruiser’s property fence like dark green barricades erected to keep out his world.

The Bruiser opens a rusted gate that bears a NO TRESPASSING sign and latches it behind him, then crosses through the weeds toward his house. I follow along in the adjacent alley and peer between two of the Dumpsters. Looking through that rusted chain- link fence is like looking into a whole other time and place. The old one-story farmhouse is more like a shack. There’s a big, rusted propane tank, and the farmhouse roof is shedding shingles. The building seems to list, as if it has shifted off its foundation. The place is painted a color that I think was once green but has since faded to various shades that have no specific name on the color spectrum. And the smell of the place…well, it smells like bull and the stuff a bull leaves behind. I pity the neighbors downwind.

Today, however, the lone bull on the farm isn’t very active. In fact, it doesn’t look right at all. I don’t know much about livestock, but if a large animal is lying on its side with its head at a funny angle and its eyes open, chances are it’s not taking a nap.

I watch it for a long time waiting for it to move, but it doesn’t; and now I know something’s wrong, because the Bruiser’s just standing there staring at it with the same dumb expression I must have on my own face. That’s when his brother comes out onto the porch.

Snapshot of kid brother:

Bare feet, torn jeans, and a striped shirt that’s as faded as the wood slats of the old farmhouse. He’s got a runny nose I can see glistening all the way from here, and dirty blond hair where the “dirty” actually means dirty. Flocks of birds could make their nest in there and no one would know, and I’m only slightly exaggerating. This kid is the definition of “feral child.”

So the kid comes out onto the porch, all snot nosed and teary eyed, and says to the Bruiser, “Tri-tip is sick, Brew. You can help him, right?”

The Bruiser just stands there looking at the bull and finally, slowly, turns to his brother. “Nothing’s gonna help him, Cody.”

“No!” says Cody. “No! Don’t say that; he’s just sick is all. You can fix it; you always fix it!”

“I’m sorry, Cody,” says the Bruiser; and then, all tears and drama, Cody races to the deceased bull, throws himself on it, and tries to give it a weird, awkward hug, but his arms can’t reach around the thing.

“No, no, no!” Cody cries.

Maybe I should be feeling something here—some sort of sadness—because, after all, this is clearly a beloved pet; but it’s all so weird. It’s like I’m watching the psychotic version of Old Yeller, where the dead dog has been digitally replaced by this sorry old bull with lonely eyes that stare at me from across the field. Eyes that seem to be asking, “Do I really need this?”

That’s when the third and final family member comes out onto the porch.

Portrait of the Bruiser’s uncle:

Well-worn pointy boots, a tarnished belt buckle about half the size of a hubcap, tentaclelike tattoos that disappear up into his shirtsleeves, gray wispy hair, and bristly beard stubble. By the way he holds on to the doorframe as he steps out, I can tell he’s either drunk or hungover. I want to scream at him, “Don’t you know you’re a walking stereotype?” The bitter, aging redneck. I’m sure his name is something like Wyatt or Clem: a wannabe cowboy whose cow just dropped dead.

As if to acknowledge my assessment, the man flicks a cigarette butt and says, “I shoulda sold that bull for dog food years ago.”

“Don’t say that, Uncle Hoyt!” wails Cody.

“You see what I’ve gotta put up with?” Uncle Hoyt says to the Bruiser. “You see?” As if it’s all the Bruiser’s fault. “Where you been? How come you’re not home on time?”

“I am home on time.” Then the Bruiser asks his uncle, “When did it happen?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Over by the bull, Cody continues to wail. “It’s not true…. It’s not true….”

“Will you shut him up?” demands Uncle Hoyt.

The Bruiser moves to his brother and pries him away from the dead bull; but the kid goes ballistic, screaming and cursing and fighting and kicking, limbs flailing like a spider monkey.

“Cody, stop it!” the Bruiser yells; but the kid’s gone into demonic possession mode, scratching and biting until it’s all the Bruiser can do just to peel him off himself. And the second he does, Cody jumps back on the bull, clinging to it like cellophane and bawling even more loudly than before.

That’s when Uncle Hoyt reaches down, undoes his belt buckle, and in a single move pulls his belt out of his pants, wrapping the end of it around his palm like it’s something he does on a regular basis. He storms toward the boy, buckle end dangling. “IT’S DEAD!” the man screams. “GET YOUR SNIVELIN’ ASS AWAY FROM IT OR I SWEAR I’LL WAIL ON YOUR HIDE TWELVE WAYS TILL DOOMSDAY .” He brings his arm back, threatening to swing the buckle—and the Bruiser doesn’t do a thing. He just stands there watching, like he’s helpless to stop it.

“No!”

That’s my voice. I don’t even realize I’m going to shout it until the word’s already out of my mouth. I never meant to intercede, but I can’t help it. Someone has to stop this.

Suddenly they all turn to me, and now I’m part of the cast of this twisted old Western. I have no choice but to take my place in the scene. I drop my backpack but keep hold of my lacrosse stick. Then I quickly climb the Dumpster and jump over the fence, racing toward the three of them. The moment I’m close enough, I raise my lacrosse stick as a weapon, perhaps the way it was done back in the days when the game was warfare. Then I stare the man in his hateful, rheumy eyes and say, “If you hit that kid, I will take you down!”

And everything freezes like a snow globe. I half expect little flakes to start swimming all around us. Then the Bruiser steps in front of me. He grabs me with his heavy hands, and he whispers angrily into my ear, “Stay out of this!”

I try to pull free from the Bruiser’s grasp, but he’s just too big. As I struggle, my lacrosse stick falls to the ground. “Who the hell are you?” Uncle Hoyt finally says now that he’s not in imminent danger of having his head bashed in.

The Bruiser pushes me back. “Stay out of this!” he says again. “This isn’t any of your business.”

“Please, Uncle Hoyt,” pleads Cody, “leave Tri-tip alone.”

Uncle Hoyt looks at me, sizing me up. “This a friend of yours?” he asks the Bruiser.

“No!” says the Bruiser quickly. “Just some kid from school.”

Uncle Hoyt spits on the ground, giving me a dirty look. Then he turns and saunters inside, dragging the belt like that buckle’s his pet on a leash. The screen door closes and I can’t see him anymore, but I hear him calling from inside: “You dispose of that bull, Brewster. I don’t wanna know about it.”

The Bruiser stares at me with anger that ought to be directed at his uncle, and now the only sounds are clanking shopping carts from the market beyond the fence and the wails of a little boy clinging to a dead beast that’s already collecting flies.

With Uncle Hoyt gone, the Bruiser holds my gaze only a moment more before he decides I’m not worth the effort. Then he goes over to his brother…but instead of comforting him, he kneels beside him, puts his hands on the bull just like his brother, and just like his brother he begins to grieve. It starts with mild weeping but soon crescendos into the same tortured sobs as his little brother, both of them wailing in a strange harmony of misery.

I’m embarrassed to be watching—it’s as if I’m witnessing something too personal to view—but I can’t look away. I want to leave, but it would be like walking out in the middle of a funeral.

A few moments more and Cody’s sobbing begins to resolve into whimpers; but the Bruiser is still doubled over in his sorrow, the sobs so intense I can almost feel the ground shake as his chest heaves. In a moment Cody has fully recovered, as if all he needed was someone else to share in his grief.

The Bruiser’s anguished sobs go on for at least another minute while Cody waits, patient and untroubled, playing tic-tac-toe in the dirt.

Finally the Bruiser’s sobs begin to trail off. He gets control of himself. Then he stands and picks up Cody, who wraps his spidery arms around his big brother’s neck. Brewster carries his brother inside without even looking at me once.

I stand there for a while, more than ready to leave yet feeling like there’s something left undone. Finally I pick up my lacrosse stick and try to wipe off the mud—at least I hope it’s mud. I turn to go, deciding that this was all just one big mistake, when I hear the screen door creak open behind me. I turn to see the Bruiser coming outside again.

“Mind telling me what you’re doing here?” he asks.

I’m beyond making up excuses now, beyond caring what comes out of my mouth. And when you don’t care what you say, the truth comes with amazing ease. “I was spying on you to find out what’s wrong with you and your family.”

I expect him to spew something nasty at me, but instead he just sits on the porch steps and says, “Find out all that you wanted to know?”

“Enough,” I answer him. “Were you just gonna let your uncle beat on your brother?”

He looks me dead in the eyes. “What makes you so sure he would do it?”

“You don’t pull out your belt like that unless you plan to use it.” The Bruiser just shrugs. “How do you know? Do you think you know my uncle better than I do? Maybe he just likes to hear himself yell—did you ever think of that?”

I can’t quite figure all of this out, but he’s put enough doubt in my mind now so that I can’t answer him, which I’m sure is what he wants. But then I remember something.

“I saw your back,” I remind him. “I think I can put two and two together.”

Now his gaze looks a little angry again. A little scared. “Two and two doesn’t always equal four.” There’s something about his tone of voice— something that says that maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s not what I think. But there is also something in his voice that says it’s worse.

“Anyway,” he says, “it was gutsy of you to stand up to Uncle Hoyt like that.”

“Yeah, well…”

“You wanna come in?” he asks. This I was not expecting.

“Why would I want to do that?”

He shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe to see that we don’t live with rats. To see that I’m not building pipe bombs in my basement.”

“I never said you were.”

“But I bet you thought it.”

I look away from him at that. The truth is, from the moment I found out he was dating Brontë, I thought every possible bad thing my imagination could muster up about him. Pipe bombs in the basement were on the milder end of the spectrum.

“C’mon,” he said, “I’ll get you something to drink.”

Maybe it did take guts to stand up to his crazy, belt-wielding uncle, but I think it took more guts for the Bruiser to invite me inside.

11) DÉTENTE

I follow the Bruiser in. I have to say, I’m a little disappointed at what I find. It’s just a house. Sure, it’s kind of run-down and sparsely decorated, but it’s still just a house. The one thing about it, though, is that all the colors are off, just like on the outside. The wallpaper is faded, the sofa has stains on the cushions, the blue carpet is mottled purple and brown in spots. A bruise, I think, the entire house is like one big bruise.

I can hear a TV playing somewhere deeper in the house. Beyond the kitchen is an arched doorway, dark except for the flickering light of the TV. There must be a family room back there, but somehow I suspect family has little to do with it. I’m sure it’s Uncle Hoyt’s lair, complete with a deteriorating recliner, a TV with color issues, and empty beer cans multiplying like dust bunnies.

The Bruiser pours me some lemonade. “I promise it’s not poisoned,” he says.

I don’t want to touch anything. Not because it’s dirty but because it feels unclean. I can’t quite explain the difference, although I suspect it has something to do with my own snob factor. Conflicted, I force myself to sit in a chair at the kitchen table. There are dirty dishes in the sink. He notices me noticing.

“Sorry,” he says, “the dishes are my job. I usually take care of them when I get home.”

“What does your uncle do?” I asked him.

“Road construction,” Brewster says. “He works nights, driving a steamroller for the Transportation Authority.”

Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. I get this image of a maniacal Uncle Hoyt rolling over defenseless wildlife caught in the unset asphalt.

I pick up my glass, and he looks at my knuckles. Four out of five knuckles on my right hand have scabs in various states of healing. “Where’d you get those,” he asks, “beating on band geeks?”

He’s trying to push my buttons. I don’t let him. “Lacrosse,” I tell him.

“Right,” he says. “Must be a rough sport.”

I shrug. “Good for getting out your aggression.”

He nods. “What do you do in the off-season?”

“I use the stick to smash mailboxes.” He looks at me like I’m serious.

“I’m kidding,” I tell him, but he doesn’t seem entirely convinced. I’m uncomfortable with the conversation being all about me, so I flip it back on him.

“So, your uncle’s got a government job; he must pull in a decent salary.”

The question is right there, although I don’t ask it directly: If he’s got a decent job, then why do you live like this?

The Bruiser glances back toward the family room. The shifting glow from the TV plays on the arched doorway like lightning, making it look like a portal to another dimension. The gateway to Hoyt-Hell: Abandon all hope ye who enter. He turns back to me and speaks softly. “My uncle’s got an ex-wife and three kids in Atlanta. The government garnishes his wages.”

“Garnish,” I say. “I thought that was, like, parsley on a dinner plate.”

The Bruiser grins. “So there’s something I know that you don’t?” He relishes the moment before explaining. “Garnishing means the government takes child support right out of his salary even before he gets the check because they know he won’t pay it otherwise.” The Bruiser thinks about it and shakes his head. “Funny—he runs out on his wife and three kids and then he ends up stuck with Cody and me.”

I’m about to ask him how that came to be, but I realize it must not be a pretty story. If they’re stuck with a loser uncle, it means that their parents are gone in one way or another. Dead, incarcerated, or AWOL. No joy in any of the possibilities, so I don’t ask.

“You’re uncle sounds like quite a guy,” I say, the sarcasm practically pooling around my ankles, adding another stain to the carpet.

“There are worse things,” he says.

Right about now Cody comes out of his room, shirtless.

“My shirt smelled like Tri-tip,” he says, “but I got no clean shirts. It’s your fault I got no clean shirts!” he tells his brother.

The Bruiser sighs and says to me, “I do the laundry here, too.”

I wonder if there are any chores he doesn’t do.

When I glance at Cody again, I note that the kid’s back is nothing like his brother’s. No bruises, no scars, no sign that their short-tempered uncle beats him at all. I begin to wonder if maybe I’m wrong in assuming the man is an abuser. Maybe he just blusters, but he’s all wind and no weather. Still, it doesn’t answer the question about the Bruiser’s back. The Bruiser goes to a little laundry room just off the kitchen and mines through a huge pile of clothes on top of the dryer. He pulls out a small T- shirt and tosses it to Cody.

“Is it clean?”

“No, I wiped my butt on it.”

Cody scowls at him, smells the shirt just in case, and walks away satisfied. He disappears into his room, struggling, Houdini-like, to get his head and arms into the shirt at the same time.

The Bruiser comes back out to join me in the kitchen.

“So, you haven’t gotten to the part where you ask me to stay away from your sister. You tried threatening me and that didn’t work, so now I figure you’re going to try it more respectfully.”

I look away from him. I know it might make me seem guilty, but, really, I’m feeling angry at myself for having bullied him in the first place. “Brontë makes her own decisions,” I tell him, then add, “but I won’t be happy if she comes anywhere near Uncle Hoyt.”

“Neither will I,” he says, “and just in case you’re worried, I’m not like my uncle.”

“I can see that.” Then I hold out my hand to him. “So… no hard feelings?”

He looks at my hand for a few moments, and I think that maybe there are hard feelings after all; but then he shakes it with a decisive, confident grasp.

We nod to each other—an understanding has been reached, like a dëtente between two nations that would otherwise be at war.

Then Uncle Hoyt slinks out from his lair, and Brewster withdraws his hand like he’s been caught with it in the cookie jar. The man looks at us suspiciously, as if we’re plotting against him. “What’s he still doing here? Didn’t I tell you to get rid of Tri-tip?”

The Bruiser opens his mouth to say something, but I speak first. “What is he supposed to do, snap his fingers and make it go away?”

The man grins, and it’s something slimy and nasty. All of a sudden I feel unclean again. “Can’t expect you to lift the whole animal at once,” he says. “The chain saw’s out in the shed.”

12) MISDIRECTION

When I get home that night, I don’t say anything to Brontë about where I was and what I did that afternoon. Even when she comments at dinner that I smell funny, I just tell her I’ll take a shower—even though I’ve already taken two.

I won’t get into the details of Tri-tip’s disposal. It was not a pretty sight. I can only thank God there are Dumpsters just on the other side of the Bruiser’s fence. Now I understand the close-knit nature of the Mafia, because there’s something bonding about disposing of a body.

The next day I see the Bruiser during passing, between second and third periods. We nod to each other an unspoken greeting, almost like it’s something secret. He raises a hand to hoist his backpack farther up on his shoulder, and that’s when I notice the knuckles on his right hand. Four out of five knuckles are all raw and starting to scab. I figure he must have scraped them up pretty badly during our bull-carving extravaganza yesterday afternoon.

Reflexively I look at my own knuckles and notice right away that my scabs are gone. I tend to heal quickly, so I try to dismiss it. After all, how often do I actually look at my knuckles? I get scraped and bruised so much, I don’t notice it anymore.

Except that I did notice my scabbed knuckles yesterday. The Bruiser and I both did.

I try to tell myself it’s nothing, that it’s one of life’s simple tricks, just like a stage magician’s clever misdirection to keep the audience baffled. Yet deep down I know there’s something more going on here. Something truly inexplicable I’m afraid to consider.