Ferguson looked over at his mother and said: What does the word fracas mean?
A big fight, she answered. A commotion.
That’s what I thought, he said. I just needed to make sure.
Months passed. The school year ended with no further trouble from Krolik, Timmerman, or anyone else, and then Miss Van Horn’s twenty-three ex-pupils parted company for the summer vacation. Ferguson went off to Camp Paradise for his second eight-week stint there, and although most of his time was spent running around on ball fields and splashing in the lake, there were enough free hours during the post-lunch rest periods and the post-dinner lulls for him to write the articles and map out the design for the third issue of the Crusader. He finished the job at home during the two-week gap between the end of camp and the start of school, working every morning, afternoon, and most evenings in order to meet his self-imposed deadline of September first, which would give his mother enough time to run off the facsimiles at Myerson’s to have the issue ready by the first day of school. It would be a good way to begin the year, he felt, a little jolt to get things off to a fast start, and after that he would see what he wanted to do, decide whether there should be more Crusaders or if this was in fact the last one.
He had promised Timmerman he would let him know if there was going to be another issue, but all the articles had been written before he had a chance to contact him. He called Timmerman’s house the day after he came home from camp, but the housekeeper told him that Michael and his parents and two brothers were on a fishing trip in the Adirondacks and wouldn’t be returning until the day before school started. Earlier in the summer, Ferguson had considered writing the funny, va-va-voom version of the movie actress story and putting it in the issue, but he had killed the idea out of deference to Timmerman’s feelings, understanding how cruel it would have been to run it, how hurt Timmerman would have been by such a witty demolition of his own dull effort. If he had kept Timmerman’s version of the story, he might have considered publishing it as a courtesy, but he had given it back to him on the playground in April, and therefore it wasn’t possible. A new issue of the Cobble Road Crusader was about to hit the jungle gyms and classrooms of Ferguson’s elementary school, and Michael Timmerman knew nothing about it.
That was his first mistake.
His second mistake was that he remembered too much from his conversation with Gary in the backyard.
The fracas in Caracas was old news by then, but Ferguson couldn’t let go of the phrase, it had been rattling in his head for months, so rather than use the headline for a report on what had happened to Nixon, he turned the piece into a boxed editorial in the middle of the front page, with FRACAS IN CARACAS appearing just above the fold and the rest of the article just below it. Inspired by his talk with Gary, he argued that America should stop worrying about communism so much and listen to what people in other countries had to say. “It was wrong to try to overturn the vice president’s car,” he wrote, “but the men who did that were angry, and they were angry for a reason. They don’t like America because they feel America is against them. That doesn’t mean they’re communists. It only means that they want to be free.”
First came the punch, the angry punch to his stomach as Timmerman yelled the word liar and knocked him to the ground. The last twenty-one copies of the Crusader flew out of Ferguson’s hands, and then they began to scatter across the schoolyard in the stiff morning wind, shooting past the other children like an army of stringless kites. Ferguson stood up and tried to deliver a punch of his own, but Timmerman, who seemed to have grown three or four inches over the summer, swatted it away and countered with another blow to the gut, which landed with far greater force than the first one had, not only knocking Ferguson to the ground again but knocking the breath clear out of him. By then, Krolik, Tommy Fucks, and several other boys were standing over Ferguson and laughing at him, taunting him with words that sounded like pus-bucket, faggot, and cunt-brain, and when Ferguson managed to stand up again, Timmerman pushed him to the ground for the third time, pushed him hard, which sent Ferguson crashing down on his left elbow, and within seconds the horrible funny-bone pain had all but immobilized him, which gave Krolik and Fucks enough time to start kicking dirt in his face. He closed his eyes. Somewhere in the distance a girl was screaming.
Then came the reprimands and punishments, the after-school detention, the idiot task of writing the words I will not fight in school two hundred times, the ceremonial, bury-the-hatchet handshake with Timmerman, who refused to look into Ferguson’s eyes, who would never look into his eyes again, who would go on hating Ferguson for the rest of his life, and then, just as they were about to be dismissed by their new sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Blasi, the principal’s secretary walked into the classroom and told Ferguson that he was wanted downstairs in Mr. Jameson’s office. What about Michael? Mr. Blasi asked. No, not Michael, Miss O’Hara replied. Just Archie.
Ferguson found Mr. Jameson sitting behind his desk with a copy of the Cobble Road Crusader in his hands. He had been in charge of the school for the past five years, and every year he seemed to grow a little shorter and rounder and to have a little less hair on his head. Brown hair to begin with, Ferguson remembered, but the thinning strands that were left had now turned gray. The principal didn’t invite Ferguson to sit down, so Ferguson remained on his feet.
You understand that you’re in serious trouble, don’t you? Mr. Jameson said.
Trouble? Ferguson said. I’ve just been punished. How can I still be in trouble?
You and Timmerman were punished for fighting. I’m talking about this.
Mr. Jameson tossed the Crusader onto his desk.
Tell me, Ferguson, the principal continued, are you responsible for every article in this issue?
Yes, sir. Every word of every article.
No one helped you write anything?
No one.
And your mother and father. Did they read it in advance?
My mother did. She helps me with the printing, so she gets to see it before anyone else. My father didn’t read it until yesterday.
And what did they say to you about it?
Nothing much. Nice job, Archie. Keep up the good work. Something like that.
So you’re telling me that the editorial on the front page was your idea.
Fracas in Caracas. Yes, my idea.
Tell the truth, Ferguson. Who’s been poisoning your mind with communist propaganda?
What?
Tell me, or else I’m going to have to suspend you for printing these lies.
I didn’t lie.
You’ve just started the sixth grade. That means you’re eleven years old, right?
Eleven and a half.
And you expect me to believe that a boy your age can come up with a political argument like this one? You’re too young to be a traitor, Ferguson. It just isn’t possible. Some older person must be feeding you this garbage, and I’m guessing it’s your mother or father.
They’re not traitors, Mr. Jameson. They love their country.
Then who’s been talking to you?
No one.
When you started your paper last year, I went along with it, didn’t I? I even let you interview me for one of the articles. I found it charming, just the sort of thing a bright young boy should be doing. No controversy, no politics, and then you go away for the summer and come back a Red. What am I supposed to do with you?
If it’s the Crusader that’s causing the problem, Mr. Jameson, you don’t have to worry about it anymore. There were only fifty copies of the back-to-school issue, and half of them blew away when the fight started. I’ve been on the fence about whether I should keep going with it, but after the fight this morning, my mind is made up. The Cobble Road Crusader is dead.
Is that a promise, Ferguson?
So help me God.
Stick to that promise, and maybe I’ll try to forget that you deserve to be suspended.
No, don’t forget. I want to be suspended.
Every boy in the sixth grade is against me now, and school is about the last place I want to be anymore. Suspend me for a long time, Mr. Jameson.
Don’t make jokes, Ferguson.
I’m not joking. I’m the odd man out, and the longer I can stay away from here, the better off I’ll be.
* * *
HIS FATHER WAS in a different line of work now. No more 3 Brothers Home World, but a vast weatherproof bubble that sat on the West Orange–South Orange border and was called the South Mountain Tennis Center, six indoor courts that allowed the tennis enthusiasts of the area to indulge their passion for the sport twelve months a year, to play during rainstorms and blizzards, to play at night, to play before the sun rose on winter mornings, half a dozen green, hard-surface courts, a pair of locker rooms equipped with sinks, toilets, and showers, and a pro shop that sold rackets, balls, sneakers, and tennis whites for men and women. The 1953 fire had been ruled an accident, the insurance company had paid up in full, and rather than rebuild or open another store in a new location, Ferguson’s father had generously given his employee-brothers a share of the money (sixty thousand dollars each) and had used the remaining one hundred and eighty thousand to put his tennis project into motion. Lew and Millie took off for southern Florida, where Lew became a promoter of dog races and jai alai matches, and Arnold opened a store in Morristown that specialized in children’s birthday parties, stocking his shelves with bags of balloons, crepe-paper streamers, candles, noisemakers, funny hats, and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey posters, but New Jersey wasn’t ready for such a novel concept, and when the store went out of business two and a half years later, Arnold turned to Stanley for help and was given a job in the pro shop at the Tennis Center. As for Ferguson’s father, every day of the two and a half years it had taken Arnold to run his store into the ground had been spent in raising capital to augment the money he had invested on his own, searching for and eventually buying land, consulting with architects and contractors, and then, finally, erecting the South Mountain Tennis Center, which opened its doors in March 1956, one week after his son’s ninth birthday.
Ferguson liked the weatherproof bubble and the eerie, echoing sounds of tennis balls flying around in that cavernous space, the pop-pop-pop medley of rackets colliding with balls when several courts were in use at the same time, the intermittent squeaks of rubber soles jamming against the hard surfaces, the grunts and gasps, the long stretches when not a single word was spoken by anyone, the hushed solemnity of white-clad people batting white balls over white nets, a small, self-enclosed world that looked like no other place in the big world outside the dome. He felt that his father had done the right thing in changing jobs, that television sets and refrigerators and box-spring mattresses can speak to you for just so long and then a moment comes when you should jump ship and try something else, and because his father was so fond of tennis, why not earn his living from the game he loved? All the way back in 1953, in the spooky days after 3 Brothers Home World burned to the ground, when his father was beginning to formulate his plan for the South Mountain center, his mother had warned him of the risks involved in such a venture, the enormous gamble his father would be taking, and indeed there had been many ups and downs along the way, and even after the center had been built, it had taken some time before the membership ranks grew large enough for the incoming fees to surpass the monthly costs of running such a large operation, which meant that for most of the three-plus years between late 1953 and mid-1957 the Ferguson family had depended on the earnings of Roseland Photo to keep its head above water. Things had improved since then, the center and the studio were both running well in the black, generating enough income to provide for such extravagances as a new Buick for his father, a fresh paint job for the house, a mink stole for his mother, and two consecutive summers at sleepaway camp for Ferguson, but even though their circumstances were more comfortable now, Ferguson understood how hard his parents worked to maintain that comfort, how consuming their jobs were and how little time they had for anything else, especially his father, who kept the tennis center open seven days a week, from six in the morning until ten at night, and while he had a staff of employees to help him, Chuck O’Shea and Bill Abramavitz, for example, who could more or less run things on their own, and John Robinson, an ex–Pullman porter who watched over the courts and locker rooms, and deadbeat Uncle Arnold, who ground out his hours in the pro shop smoking Camels and flipping through newspapers and racing forms, and the three young assistants, Roger Nyles, Ned Fortunato, and Richie Siegel, who rotated in six- and seven-hour shifts, and half a dozen high school part-timers, Ferguson’s father rarely took any days off during the cold-weather months, and not many during the warm-weather months either.
Because his parents were so preoccupied, Ferguson tended to keep his troubles to himself. In the case of a dire emergency, he knew he could count on his mother to stand with him, but the fact was that there hadn’t been any emergencies in the past couple of years, at least none bad enough to send him rushing to her for help, and now that he was eleven and a half, most of the situations that had once seemed dire to him had been reduced to a set of smaller problems he could solve on his own. Getting beaten up on the playground before the first day of school was no doubt a big problem. Being accused of spreading communist propaganda by the principal was unquestionably a big problem as well. But was either one of those problems grave enough to be considered dire? Forget that he had been close to tears after the smackdown in Mr. Jameson’s office, forget that he had gone on fighting back those tears during the entire walk home from school. It had been a wretched day, probably the worst day of his life since the day he fell out of the tree and fractured his leg, and there was every reason in the world for him to want to break down and cry. Punched by his friend, insulted by his other friends, with nothing but more punches and more insults to look forward to, and then the final indignity of being called a traitor by his dumb coward of a principal, who didn’t even have the nerve to suspend him. Yes, Ferguson was feeling blue, Ferguson was struggling not to cry, Ferguson was in a tough spot, but what good would it do to tell his parents about it? His mother would be all sympathy, of course, she would want to hug him and take him in her arms, she would gladly turn him into a little boy again and hold him on her lap as he bawled forth his tearful lamentations, and then she would become angry on his behalf, she would threaten to call Mr. Jameson and give him a piece of her mind, a meeting would be arranged, the adults would argue about him, everyone would be shouting about the pinko subversive and his pinko parents, and what good would that do, how could anything his mother said to him or did for him stop the next punch from coming? His father would be more practical about it. He would take out the boxing gloves and give Ferguson another lesson in the art of fisticuffs, the sweet science, as his father liked to call it, surely the worst misnomer in human history, and for twenty minutes he would demonstrate how to keep your guard up and defend yourself against a taller opponent, but what use were boxing gloves on a playground where people fought with bare knuckles and didn’t follow the rules, where it wasn’t always one against one but often two against one or three against one and even four against one? Dire. Yes, perhaps it was dire, but Father didn’t know best, Mother didn’t know best, and therefore he would have to keep it to himself. No cries for help. Not a word to either one of them. Just stick it out, stay clear of the playground, and hope he wasn’t dead before Christmas.
He lived in hell for the entire school year, but the nature of that hell, and the laws that governed that hell, kept shifting from month to month. He had assumed it would largely be a matter of punches, of being punched and then punching back as hard as he could, but big battles in the open air were off the agenda, and although he was often punched during the first weeks of school, he never had a chance to punch back, for the punches he received were delivered without warning—a boy rushing up to him out of nowhere, belting him in the arm or the back or the shoulder, and then running away before Ferguson could res
pond. Punches that hurt, one-blow sneak attacks when no one was looking, always a different boy, nine different boys from the eleven other boys in his class, as if they had all conferred with one another and worked out their strategy in advance, and once Ferguson had received those nine punches from the nine different boys, the punches stopped. After that it was the cold shoulder, those same nine boys refusing to talk to him, pretending not to hear Ferguson when he opened his mouth and said something, looking at him with blank, indifferent faces, acting as if he were invisible, a drop of nothingness dissolving into the empty air. Then came the period of pushing him to the ground, the old trick of one boy getting down on his hands and knees behind him while another boy pushed from the front, a quick shove to make him lose his balance, and then Ferguson would find himself tumbling over the crouching boy’s back, and more than once his head hit the ground first, and not only was there the dishonor of being caught with his guard down once again, there was the pain. So much fun, so much laughter at his expense, and the boys were so cunning and efficient that Mr. Blasi never seemed to notice a thing. The defaced drawings, the scribbled-over math assignments, the missing lunch bags, the garbage in his cubby, the cut-off jacket sleeve, the snow in his galoshes, the dog turd in his desk. Winter was the time of pranks, the bitter season of indoor nastiness and ever-deepening despair, and then the ice thawed a couple of weeks after his twelfth birthday, and a new round of punches began.
If not for the girls, Ferguson surely would have crumbled to pieces, but none of the twelve girls in the class turned against him, and on top of that there were the two boys who refused to take part in the savagery, the fat and slightly moronic Anthony DeLucca, variously known as Chubs, Blubs, and Squish, who had always looked up to Ferguson and had often been victimized by Krolik and company in the past, and the new boy, Howard Small, a quiet, intelligent kid who had moved to West Orange from Manhattan over the summer and was still feeling his way as a neophyte in the suburban hinterlands. In effect, the majority of the students were in Ferguson’s camp, and because he wasn’t alone, at least not altogether alone, he managed to tough it out by adhering to his three central principles: never let them see you cry, never lash back in frustration or anger, and never breathe a word about it to anyone in authority, especially not his parents. It was a brutal and demoralizing business, of course, with countless tears shed into his pillow at night, ferocious, ever more elaborate dreams of revenge, prolonged descents into the rocky chasms of melancholia, a grotesque mental fugue in which he saw himself jumping off the top of the Empire State Building, silent harangues against the injustice of what was happening to him, accompanied by a fitful, frantic drumbeat of self-contempt, the secret conviction that he deserved to be punished because he had brought this horror upon himself. But that was in private. In public he forced himself to be hard, to take the punches without emitting a single yelp of pain, ignoring them in the way you ignored ants on the ground or the weather in China, walking away from each new humiliation as if he were the victor in some cosmic struggle between good and evil, reining in any expression of sorrow or defeat because he knew the girls were watching, and the more bravely he stood up to his attackers, the more the girls would be on his side.