Slot Machine (14 page)

It was all the gung-ho slottists and their likewise square-jawed daddies who did that. No normal families. No women. The point seemed to be to separate THEM from, well, sub-THEMs. A nod, a wink, a quick chugalug, and we had order.

And a party. The plan worked beautifully. Shortly after the fathers passed through the beer line once, then twice, there was action. Three-legged races. Touch football. Water-balloon tosses. They even ate the ribs.

Brother Jackson stood there taking it all in, smiling, smiling, nodding, waving, making out the little mental lineup card for the next four years.

“Why not?” I heard Brenda say.

“You think so?” my mother answered.

And off they went.

“Oh my god!” I said to Mikie. “Can’t you do something? Stop them.”

“Why?” he said, grinning as he watched Brother Jackson reluctantly hand over two beers to the ladies.

“What is she doing?” I said. “She doesn’t drink beer. “You don’t drink beer,” I said as she returned. “You go give that back right this minute.”

“Hush, Elvin,” Mom said.

I looked on, horrified, as my mother chipped her long perfect nails picking at the top of that filthy beer can.

“Here, let me get that for you,” Mikie said, ever the frigging gentleman.

“Thank you, Mike,” she said, and... I watched her little bit of an Adam’s apple flick four times as she held the can up.
Four
times. The can was up there for, like ten minutes.

“Want me to run and get your toga out of the car, Ma?” I asked, arms folded.

“Oil your hinges, will you, Elvin?” Brenda said, and gave me a shove. She pushed me a few feet back.

I returned. “Oh, come on,” Ma said, putting her arm around me and forcing me to sit at the picnic table with her.

“See,
they’re
drinking iced tea,” I said, indicating the other mothers.

“Until Monday when their husbands go back to work.”

“Well, at least they make the eff—”

“Elvin, have a piece of corn bread. You love corn bread.”

“I’m not hungry. I had a big breakfast.”

“That was hours and hours ago. And you’re still not hungry? What did you eat?”

“I’m in training. I just have to watch it, that’s all.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. And she did see. She didn’t see it all, but she saw enough to know to leave it alone.

A football came spinning end over end our way, skidded across the table, and landed under Mom’s bench. She sipped her beer, reached for the ball.

“All right. Right here, lady,” guys from both teams hollered at her, clapping their hands.

“Throw it long,” Brenda called.

“Give it to me—I’ll walk it over,” I said.

She wound up, big like a baseball pitcher, her left foot immodestly high in the air, and let it fly.

The ball went straight up in the air, landed on the picnic table, bounced off the corn bread without chipping a single piece, then rolled meekly to the ground. Mikie picked it up and sailed it back while all the real men laughed and joked and applauded.

“Who was that? Sign her up,” one kid yelled.

Another kid, one of the chosen ones I recognized from my football days, called out an answer. “Couldn’t you tell? That’s Elvin’s father,” he yelled.

“Can we go now?” I asked very quietly but very firmly. “Can we, please?”

Mom nodded, and as we started walking, Mikie and Brenda joined us. “So where are we going?” Brenda asked.

“Someplace better than this,” I said. “A special Sector where only the coolest guys are allowed. The library.”

“We have a library?” Mikie laughed.

“Yes, but usually I’m the only one allowed in. I’ll make an exception for parents’ weekend, though.”

“So,” Mom said when we’d put a little distance between them and us, “do you still really hate it here that badly?”

“Sure do,” I said.

“Well, you can come home if you want to. I’m glad you tried it, but if you don’t want to stay the last week, you can come home with Brenda and me tomorrow.”

I gave it time, as if I was thinking it over, even though I wasn’t. I didn’t want her to feel rejected. “No. Thanks anyway,” I said evenly.

“I’m proud of you, Elvin. I really am,” she said, and she took my hand.

“Ah, you’re drunk,” I said, squeezing.

I turned on only a couple of lights in the library. It was darker and more musty and beautiful than before. Mikie was awed at what was here that nobody even knew about. We didn’t do much, except browse almost silently in four different directions for an hour. Maybe two hours.

I figured they all loved it as much as I did when the Nightmeal gong rang in the tower and I had to flash the lights on and off for ten minutes to collect everybody up again.

“This is the finest group we have ever had in all my years as headmaster,” Brother Jackson boomed. The audience stomped their feet and whacked their glasses with silverware and
woof-woof
ed as if they truly believed Jackson did not say that to last year’s group and wouldn’t be saying it to next year’s.

We were assembled at long tables in the dining hall, trying to eat our community meal and watch the stage at the same time. The ribs had returned. And the corn bread. The tablecloths too, that were supposed to get our all-American appetites pumped up. In an effort to keep us all from starving totally to death and leaving them with a big mess to clean up, they had also added hot dogs, hamburgers, and corn on the cob, all apparently boiled in the same gigantic vat. And finger bowls of their own secret barbecue sauce which, it was no secret, was ketchup mixed with vinegar and imitation maple syrup.

So the entertainment
had
to be good.

Part of what this was all about was to show the parents just what the administration could turn out in just a couple of weeks. Toward that end and “without further ado,” as Brother Jackson said—

“Did we miss the earlier ado?” I didn’t know where she was getting it, but Mom was developing a pretty smart mouth on her.

“I would like you all to see the future of Knights’ powerhouse football,” Jackson bellowed, clapping heartily right into his microphone so that it sounded like we were being shelled.

And out onto the stage marched the football team. In full, gleaming red-and-white home uniforms. There were twenty-two of them, representing a full offensive and defensive unit, and it was just for show, but you could bet that these same guys would wind up somewhere in that school football program in the near future. Probably wearing the numbers they’d already chosen.

“Of course”—Jackson leaned into his microphone, all smirk and smart-ass—“this is just a show. Since this is not a real”—he dragged out the word, reeeeeeal, winking—“football camp, we don’t
really
know that much about the ability of these particular boys. But come the fall, they’ll have their chance just like everybody else.”

The kids looked like a real football team. The Dallas Cowboys.

No, the Oakland Raiders.

“They frighten me,” Mom whispered.

“Ya, well they don’t scare me,” I whispered even more softly.

As the not-really-the-football-team thundered offstage right (well of course—they wore their cleats for the show), the Arroyo brothers bounded up the left side. A pair of soccer-playing twins who had just moved with their physician parents from Spain, the Arroyos
had
to be a part of the show. They were a major prize. The Knights beat out several other local Catholic schools in a savage competition to win the white-blond scholar-athletes to beef up the soccer program. Never mind that the school’s soccer program falls somewhere behind bocce ball in the hierarchy of team sports. Forget that they had to hustle to get enough kids to qualify as a team and thus provide the Arroyos with a forum for their skills. The Arroyos were a high-profile acquisition for a school that made the front page of the metro section after an investigation into the “complexion” of their scholarship programs.

So what if, as Mikie observed, “They must’ve had to
boil
those two to bleed all their color out? They’re whiter than
you
, Elvin.”

I happen to be fair skinned. To the point where you can see into me like the muscle chart in the doctor’s office.

They were a catch, and they were going on that stage. It was a bonus that they could also keep a ball in the air for a half hour without letting it hit the floor.

Which they did. It was a boring half hour, but it gave us a chance to eat and was a big public relations score for the school.

Until he spoiled it.

The Arroyos were nearing the big finale, heading the ball back and forth and back and forth, faster now and faster, actually getting people to look up from their plates as the ball pinballed between them, when...

Zzziiiip
. He came howling from backstage. Absolutely naked. Except for a skimpy little Zorro mask. He split into the middle of the boys, grabbed the ball.

“No hands,” one of the boys called automatically. “Cannot use the hands.”

He tossed the ball up, headed it a few times himself, keeping pretty fair balance, then ran out from under it, disappearing back the way he came.

The bouncing of the ball echoed through the quiet hall as everyone sat. Then a few guys started whistling. A few more started clapping. A few fathers joined in, until half the crowd was cheering, the other half muttering. He didn’t have the vocal support of most guys’ mothers, but they didn’t look entirely upset either as they whispered amongst themselves.

“Was that Frankie?” my mother finally said, making me gulp.

“When did he get so hairy?” Brenda asked.

The answers were: Yes, it was Frankie; and last summer was when he got hairy. He was cruising through his O’s apprenticeship now. Too bad his folks couldn’t be there to see.

“I am sorry,” Jackson said, and hustled the next act on. This was a stroke of genius, since they were so awful they certainly must have bored everyone into total amnesia. It was counselors, athletes, mostly team captains. Each one came out to tell in drippy detail how awesome his team was, how awesome the school was, how awesome sports would be for the kids, how awesome it was to have spirit, and how awesome his own personal coach was. The only ones who didn’t make you wish you had a gun with a scope on it were the football and hockey guys, who were drunk and in a rush to get back up to the campsite. We could hear, loud and clear, the sound of Obie throwing up as soon as he left the stage.

“You don’t do that, do you, Elvin?”

“You know I don’t drink, Ma.”

“No, I mean the nudity thing that Frankie did.”

“Ma,” I said scoldingly. I turned red just from hearing her say it, never mind doing it.

“I know. It’s just that, well, I understand that there are certain pressures sometimes, to do things in unfamiliar situations that you might not normally do. That’s all. I just want you to be aware... that’s all.”

“I’m aware,” I said.

“And to represent our fine wrestling program...” My ears pricked up at the sound. I hadn’t heard anything about this.

“... could Elvin Bishop come backstage please? Also, could...”

I was stunned breathless. I looked to my mother. I looked to Mikie. Nobody had an answer to this one. A proud little smile slipped across Mom’s face, and there was no longer a choice. I had to go.

Backstage. “How come nobody told us about this?” I asked as I cautiously stepped into my suit.

“It was all thrown together last minute,” the mean and quiet wrestling counselor said. He was big and round muscled and wouldn’t look me in the eye. We almost never saw him at the Sector, and when we did, he would only work with the real wrestlers, like Axe. “Wrestling makes a good show,” he said. “It works onstage too. We can’t exactly have a goddamn baseball game up there while your parents are eating.”

“I guess we can’t,” I said.

Other wrestlers came in and dressed. Axe, Metzger, whoever got called over the P.A. Mostly the hard cores.

I started to worry. Could it be this bad? Were they so deranged in this place that bloodshed would actually be considered part of a nice dinner-theater show? I turned to watch from the side as two of the little guys put on a fine exhibition, grappling away in front of the crowd. Technically, they were beautiful. One leg wrapped around another, a clean takedown. A half nelson. An escape. They knew exactly what they were doing, and twined around each other like one animal. A boa constrictor.

The crowd applauded heartily when they were done, and again after the next two, also small guys. I applauded too. That was the way it was supposed to be done. That was what they were up there for.

What was I doing up here?

“And now a special treat...”

“This should be good,” I thought, lost in the show now.

“The Masked Potato versus Little Death!”

Huh?

Then somebody, two somebodies, two big somebodies who stank like beer, grabbed me from behind. One wrapped me up in a bear hug, then the other jammed a sheer nylon stocking over my head.

The place erupted with laughs when they shoved me mightily out onto the stage, where I was met by my opponent, the dwarf. He ran full steam, jumped into the air, bounced off my chest.

I didn’t know what was going on, but the audience sure was loving it. I tried, dazed, to look around for answers, but every time my eyes left him, the strong little bastard slammed me, so I had to fight, sort of.

I tried to grab him, to contain him, but he ran. I chased him around the periphery of the stage, but I couldn’t get him—he ducked low to the ground and ran such tight circles that I just couldn’t manage. Then he got around me and kicked me in the behind.

I thought the hall was going to cave in on us with the wild, on-its-feet cheering of the crowd. I looked to Brother Jackson for some sort of unspoken explanation. He pretended not to see me.

Then Little Death jumped up on my back, holding me around the neck.

“I swear I’m going to kill you,” I said as his cheek pressed up against mine. I clutched desperately at his face.

“Cut the shit,” he said through quick shallow breaths. “Just do the damn show.”

“Why?” I asked, wheezing from his choke.