The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality (2 page)

In any case, that was my childish interpretation of what my family thought. And so, in looking for a more salubrious environment than the streets of Hollywood for me to spend my teens, my parents had overshot the mark a trifle by plunking me down in such an upper-class school.

Somehow, and don't ask me how, I understood that it was to my advantage to stay in that strange and alien place where boys wore white shirts and jackets and neckties to class and were required by the oddest of all customs to eat fried chicken with a knife and a fork. Somehow I understood that I could make a more stable and healthy home for myself there than the one literally flying to bits in vicious, drunken fights in California. I could pass the courses and follow the rules. I could get what was known as a good education and start to make myself a life. But I couldn't allow myself to bond or even connect very much with my upper-class and upper middle class schoolmates. That was too much of a stretch. In order to feel even marginally good about myself in those awful teen-age days, I had to remain loyal to my parent's ideas, such as I understood them, and that meant keeping myself separate from rich people and also social climbers, who were incipient rich people and for some reason were supposed to be even more detestable than the ones who had already made it.

So although I decided to remain at that school and put up with the insane rules and the impossible load of homework, I stayed on as the resident bohemian, a gadfly, and a judgment against the whole class that the institution represented, and I too, was alone.

"Do you like to ride horses?" That was Albert Keane talking to me outside the evening study hall. "
I
do," he continued when I didn't answer right away, "but it's ever so much more fun when you have someone to ride with."

I did like to ride. There was a ranch at the lower end of Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills which rented horses quite reasonably, and I used to spend many pleasant hours weaving my fantasies as I rode the trails above the city. Los Angeles, from that vantage above the permanent curtain of smog, looked like some lost city of the future where no one lived anymore because of the radioactive cloud that had poisoned it.

"Sure, Albert," I said sarcastically, "let's go right after study hall."

He laughed at that. "Oh, I don't mean
now."
He had a jolly laugh, bubbly and uncool. Everything he did was uncool, like paying sincere compliments to people without hedging them in sarcasm or irony the way the rest of us did.

"I do like to ride," I admitted. "We could ride old Mr. Stookins if we could find a camel saddle."

Albert waggled a finger at me. "Mr. Stookins is a brilliant teacher, and we're all very lucky to have him." Albert was a very funny duck. No other student in the school would have reacted that way to what I'd said, for we were as cruel and bitchy as any other group of American kids that age. To stick up for a teacher? That was really strange.

"But if you like to ride," he went on, in the same pleasant tone he'd used to reprimand me, "what I'm suggesting . . . Maybe you're already busy. It's kind of short notice, I guess, but I hope you're not. You see, I'm going home next weekend, and if you'd like to come too, Mother says it will be all right, and we have horses."

"Out of the road, rich bitch!" That was Guy Hawke, the class bully, shoving Albert out of his way. Albert staggered, and he might have fallen except for bouncing off the doorjamb.

"Watch who you're shoving, Guy," I told him, and then I thought,
Oh, God, why did I have to say that?
There was no reason for me to stand up for Albert, except that I'd been born with a bit of a temper, something I've never been able to mend, and that temper had gotten me into trouble pretty consistently over the years.

Several other boys had heard the exchange, and their own conversations came to a halt. Fear came gushing up along with the adrenaline, for there would be no way to brazen this out with words. I would have to fight him now, or kiss his ass, and I had already made up my mind which it would be.

Guy Hawke was not your average hulking bully. He was tall and lean and almost graceful in the way he slowly turned and walked back to where I stood. But when he shoved his face right down into mine, I could see how impatient he was for an opportunity to hurt someone.

"What did you say?"

"You heard me."

"You want to make something of it?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Meet me behind the studio in fifteen minutes."

"I'll be there."

Guy Hawke seemed pleased. Giving me one last baleful stare, he walked away. It was a frightening look, very powerful and predatory; it made me sorry once again that I'd gotten myself into this mess. But there was nothing to do now but go through with it, so I went back to my dorm to change out of my good clothes.

Albert followed me upstairs. "You're not going to fight with him, are you?"

"Sure, I am."

"Why?"

"Why? What do you mean why?"

"Don't you know why?"

"Get out of here, Albert. I have to get ready."

"Is it a matter of principle?"

"I don't know, Albert. I hate people like that. I always wind up fighting with people like that. It doesn't matter why."

"Do you think you have to save me from him?"

"Huh?" I was looking for my high-top sneakers.

"You told him to quit shoving me."

I had forgotten about that. "It isn't about you. A person like that, he's . . . Let's talk about it tomorrow, okay?"

"Tomorrow may be too late. Everything we do, Jack, spreads out in ripples to the edge of the universe, and then comes back to touch us with good or ill."

That made me bark with laughter. "Albert, will you give me a break?" I had broken my shoelace. "You're going to make me late for this fight. I don't want to be late. I want to be early so I can get myself set."

"You don't have to go through with this."

"Are you crazy? Of course I do."

"You can inform him that you've decided not to stoop to his level."

"If I did that, he'd be lifting his leg on me all year!"

"There's no need to be vulgar. We could go to him together as a united front. We could embarrass him with the smallness of his behavior."

"Albert, I've got to hand it to you. You are a real maniac."

Grabbing my sweatshirt, I bounded down the stairs.

The studio, where art and music classes were held, was off by itself between the quad and the gym. There were strict rules about fighting in the buildings or on the quad, but hey, boys will be boys, and there was a tacit understanding that the disciplinary machinery would overlook a fight behind the studio if nobody got seriously hurt.

When I got there, a lot of boys had already gathered to watch the fight. In a dull place like a boys' prep school where life is mostly classes and studying, news of anything interesting spreads fast. Guy Hawke wasn't there yet, so I had a chance to catch my breath and look over the killing ground. It was just a bit of lawn covered with dry autumn grass, a couple of big trees at both ends of the studio, and a hedge of blackberry bushes running below the windows in between. The lights were off in the studio but there was some spill from the lights in the gym. Coupled with a bright moon, there was plenty of light for me to get my ass kicked that evening.

I felt good. I was a little afraid of getting hurt, but I was excited too. This would be my first serious fight at that school, and I wanted to make a good showing while I lasted. One good fight with someone bigger than you fixes you right up with a reputation even if you lose; then in the future, anybody who might think to give you a hard time is more likely to pass you by for someone who won't fight back.

Boys kept arriving but they all kept pretty quiet, because if they attracted the attention of the teachers, the fight would be broken up before it started, and nobody wanted that. Now I couldn't wait for Guy to get there, because I'd decided to give them all a surprise. Instead of the usual preliminaries with insults and shoving, I was going to go at him with everything I had the second he stepped onto the grass. I could still remember that strange and awful look he had given me outside the study hall, and I wanted to get right into it before I lost my nerve.

Well, there he was, in jeans and sneakers just like me, and walking between some of the boys he liked to hang out with, big boys who were on the football team. My body gave a little hop in the air, and then I was charging. Guy crouched with his fists up to meet me and his friends jumped to either side; and suddenly, there was Albert. Damn him! I don't know where he came from, but he was right in my way and I had to pull up short or else run him down.

"Albert, get out of the way, I mean it! You're going to get hurt if you keep this up."

"Don't do it, Jack. You'll only regret it, I assure you. And as for you," he said, turning to Guy Hawke, and moving right up under the point of Guy's beaky nose, "you may think you can intimidate people with your size and strength. But I'm warning you in your best interest that
God is watching."

That made all the boys laugh. Still, there was a certain hesitancy in the laughter, I suppose because nobody was completely sure that God
wasn't
watching. Whether we believed in God or not, nobody wanted to get into trouble.

Guy Hawke was furious. It was frightening to see the veins swell up in his neck, the insane look that came into his eyes. What he was thinking I have no idea, but he brought his arm back across his body and dealt Albert a hell of a backhand crack that sent him sprawling flat on the grass. A little gasp went up from the crowd at the viciousness of it; a split second later there was another gasp because I had moved in on Guy while he was distracted and nearly dropped him with a solid punch right under the left eyebrow.

I went right in after him, trying to land a few more, but he got his guard up and was suddenly charging me in his fury. I jumped back and then started to circle him, looking for another opening.

I had gotten very lucky with that first punch, for his eye began immediately to swell, and in no time at all it was closed completely over. Now I was circling, circling to the right, into his blind side. At first he tried to rush me, but I was fast in those days. I hopped back and came right in on his blind side again. He was roaring now in his frustration, and the crowd of boys had forgotten how to be quiet in their excitement. Guy Hawke had made enemies. There were plenty of people there who would be glad to see him lose. On the other hand, I was not particularly popular myself. So anybody's blood would be welcome in that fight, and the boys cheered us on.

He charged me again, but this time I dodged wrong and circled right into the blackberry bushes. That was a bad mistake, for suddenly he was on me, punching with all his strength, knocking the wind out of me, splitting my lip. The best I could do was to grab him by the shirt and yank him into the thornbush with me, and a mighty thorough scratching we got trying to get to one another after that!

A sharp command from one of the teachers brought the fight to a halt. He looked us both over in the beam of his flashlight, and then took us both to the infirmary where a doctor was called in to look at Guy's eye. Then we were sent to our rooms and told to stay there until they decided what to do with us. The fight had been too bloody to overlook.

"Well, you are an amazing sight," said Albert when I walked into my room. There was a mirror on my dresser and I went to look at myself. My lip was split and puffy. It would be tender for a while but it would heal up fine. My face was scratched from the thorns, but that was nothing. My sweatshirt was flecked and smeared with blood. That was kind of neat.

"You should see Guy Hawke," I said.

"So what do you think that proved?"

"Look, Albert, I feel pretty good right now, so if you're going to start up again with that faggy crap, why don't you just get out of here."

To my surprise he got up and left. In the doorway he stopped and said, "I suppose a fight now and then isn't so bad. But there's no excuse for that kind of language."

A few seconds later he came back in. "I think we should wait a few weeks before we go to my house. I can't introduce you to my parents looking like that. It wouldn't make a good impression."

"Okay, Albert, whatever you say." What a maniac! I hadn't even said I wanted to go. Did I want to be associated with a fruitcake like Albert Keane? Could I go out to some big estate and take tea on the knee with the super-rich? Wouldn't that be some kind of a betrayal to my parents and the things we believed? On the other hand, I was really itching to get out of that school for a couple of days, and the idea of having a horse to ride was very tempting. I could go once, I thought, just to say I'd done it.

At that moment I felt like I could do anything I wanted. I had just gotten the best of someone who was a lot bigger than I was; he even had to see the doctor! I was high as a kite. While we had been sitting on opposite benches in the infirmary, with me holding a guaze pad against my lip, and he with a great bag of ice over one eye, Hawke had whispered hoarsely, "You hit me when I wasn't looking, you little runt. And I'm going to get even with you if it takes me the rest of my life." I gave him my best puffy-lipped smile as if to say I was ready anytime. Anytime at all.

"Okay, Rudy, here's the scoop. You get back in the Rolls and go back to the old homestead, and tell Albert that I'm very touched he was thinking of me, and I'll give him a call in a few weeks. You can leave me his number." I was actually feeling something akin to nausea from all those old memories. I was looking forward to getting Rudy and the Rolls back on the road, and then treating myself to a nice long nap.

Rudy looked a little put out. "Oh, come on, Mr. Darcey, don't be like that. Why don't you just get a few things together and let me drive you out there? Mr. Keane is going to be very disappointed if you don't show up."

The last thing I wanted was an argument about it, and I was trying to be polite to this man who had driven all the way from Massachusetts for nothing. "Look, Rudy, just tell Albert it's square business, okay? That means I promise to call him soon. Going with you today is just out of the question, that's all."