". . . a cigarette?" Sam said.
Jim said, "What?"
"Christamighty!" Sam said. "Get with it! Where are you? Lost in space? Beam me back to Earth, Scotty. I asked if you want a coffin nail."
Sam was holding in a dark hand, the fingernails dirty, two nonfilter Camels. Jim should have been grateful for the offer; he was so short of money he couldn't buy a pack. But, for some reason, he did not want to smoke.
"Nah! How about an upper?"
Sam slipped a Camel into the right comer of his lips, put the other in the pocket of his black shirt, and dipped his hand into the outside pocket of his blue jacket. It came out with three capsules.
"Yeah. Black beauties. Guaranteed to give you a balloon ride to the moon. But watch out for the landing."
"Thanks," Jim said. "I'll take one. I'll have to owe you."
"That's seven dollars you owe," Sam said. He quickly added, "Just keeping the books up to date. No hurry. Your credit's always good with me, you know. I ain't billing you for the cigarettes I been giving you, either. I know when you get them, you'll help me in my distress. Like you always say, we're Damon and Pithy-ass, whoever they might be."
Jim popped one upper into his mouth and swallowed it dry. He worked his mouth to generate saliva to help it on down.
The Biphetamine worked far faster then usual. Zap! Where there had been tired blood, as the ads said, was now a river of molten gold. Coursing through his veins, not to mention his arteries, each molecule racing the others to get back to his heart first and then back to the merry-go-round for another race at breakneck speed. The harsh and gritty light melted into a soft smoothness.
Sam had put a black beauty into his mouth before stopping to cup his hand and then flicking the Bic. He drew in deeply and blew out smoke as he resumed walking. Jim, waiting for him, looked around as if he had never seen this place before. He could see the top of Belmont Central over the scrungy houses (Pitts Avenue was the pits). Beyond that, to the northeast, was the two-story building of earthcolored brick and Tuscan columns, Wellington Hospital. To the southwest was the spire of St. Stephan's, smack in the Hungarian neighborhood. His mother bypassed St. Grobian's, the Irish church, to attend St. Stephan's even though she had to walk an extra mile.
Looking north again, Jim could see the dome of City Hall. Lots of action there, most of it dirty, if what Sam Wyzak's drunken uncle, a judge, said was true.
And straight north went Pitts Avenue, ending at the foot of Gold Hill. Up above, so high in the sky, were the homes of the kings and queens of Belmont City. While they sipped their martinis and counted their money, they could look down on the rabble, the proletariat, the salt of the earth, those who would inherit, not trust funds but the earth, that is, the dirt itself.
What made Jim's father especially angry about Gold Hill people was that his wife worked there. Her job was only part-time, and the wealthy did not pay much (the tight-assed skinflints!), but the money was better than none. Eva Nagy Grimson was employed by a small company to houseclean on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Eric's unemployment checks had long ceased to come in. Reluctantly, Eric had applied for and gotten welfare. He was of a generation that regarded welfare as shameful. He also believed that a wife should not work. The husband was humiliated if she did. He was a failure as a man and a provider.
Jim could understand why his father writhed with shame and despair and frustration. But why did he have to take it out on his wife and son? Did he think they liked the mess they were in? Were they responsible for the bad things in their lives?
Why did his father spend the precious money his wife made on booze? Why didn't he just up and pull anchor, leave the doomed house behind, take his family to California or some place where he could get a job? However, if he did that, he was up against his wife. She went along with everything he did, no matter how rotten it was, never complained or argued. Except once. When he had suggested leaving Belmont City, she had told him firmly that she would not obey him. She would not move away from the Nagy clan and their friends.
"Jesus Christ!" Eric had shouted. "If you got a Hungarian for a friend, you don't need an enemy!"
Jim and Sam were now two blocks from Central High, a huge old three-story redbrick building. At least, Jim thought, my body is two blocks from it. My mind, Jesus, where's my mind? All over the place. I got to get with it.
The day you were living in was the present. But the past was often with you, poking a sharp-nailed finger in the tissue of your brain and gouging out a piece, then pressing on a nerve to remind you that the bottom line of life was pain, then groping around other parts, feeling your dick, giving you a proctological examination, thumping your heart's naked flesh to make it beat like a hummingbird's wings, tying your intestines into a running sheepshank knot, vomiting hot acid into your stomach, whipping up nightmares with the blender of old Morpheus, ancient Greek god of sleep.
A title for a lyric. "The Dead Hand of the Past." Nah. A cliché, though that never stopped most rock lyricists. Anyway, the past was not a dead hand. You carried it with you like it was a living thing, a tapeworm. Or like Heinlein's parasitic slug from Titan, the ice-moon of Saturn, the slug growing tendrils in your back and sucking the life and brains out of you. Or like a fever no pills could cool down until you were cold-dead, and you didn't need pills then.
". . .trying to get a gig tonight, no soap," Sam was saying. "Got one Saturday night at the Whistledick Tavern out on Moonshine Ridge, but that's redneck territory, and we gotta play that godawful country-western. We might cancel. Anyway, we couldn't get one tonight, and my cup runneth over. Halloween's for fun. Remember how we pushed over old man Dumski's outhouse when we was fifteen? Maybe it was when we was fourteen. Anyway, remember how Dumski came out of his house screaming and shooting his shotgun? Man, did we run!"
"Sounds good," Jim said. "I'll call work and tell them I'm sick. I'll probably get fired, but what the hell."
Chapter 7
JUST BEFORE HE and Sam joined the gang, Sam slipped him a stick of chewing gum. "Take it. You got a breath would knock down King Kong."
"Thanks," Jim said. "Must be the Polish sausage, too much garlic. Anyway, my stomach's upset."
Three guys were waiting for them. Hakeem "Gizzy" Dillard, a short chunky black suffering from yellow jaundice. Bob "Birdshot" Pellegrino, a big youth with a huge black walrus moustache and one glass eye. Steve "Goathead" Larsen. They gave each other five fingers, Jim noticing that the greeting only seemed a hundred percent natural when Gizzy did it. Goathead brought out a marijuana butt from which each took a puff while keeping an eye on the big front entrance for an appearance of Central's principal, Jesse "Iron Pants" Bozeman, or one of his teacher snitches.
"Hey, man, you hear about what Kiss did in that hotel room in Peoria?"
"I got an upper trade you for a downer."
". . . said Mick Jagger caught the clap from the mayor's wife. . ."
"The old man said, 'You get a Mohawk, I cut off your balls.' "
". . . think Lum'll spring a surprise exam today?"
". . . and I thought. You can drive the point of that I-saw-Cele's triangle all the way up your ass. Define it, shit, I can't even pronounce it. But I was cool. So, I told Mister Slowacki, geometry ain't my fortay. That's for Republicans, and my folks always vote straight Democrat."
". . . sent to Iron Pants's office again. But he wasn't there. Probably balling his secretary in the xerox room."
". . . so he says, 'I knew you was long, and I knew you was black, but where did you get them googly eyes?' "
"Man, I swear you wasn't my asshole buddy, I don't take those racist jokes. Lemme tell you about the white woman -- a mouse ran up her snatch so she go see this black doctor. And he say. . ."
Chattering fast, seeming to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time, giggling, butt-slapping, shadowboxing, the group danced into the front hall. Jim was silent, his only responses a grunt or a forced grin. The black beauty wasn't working the wa
y it was supposed to. The guy who'd sold it to Sam must've cheated him. Probably had just a little Biphetamine in it. The rest of it was ground-up aspirin or something.
While on his way to his locker, he saw Sheila Helsgets leaning against the wall. She was talking to and smiling at Robert "Ram-'Em" Basing, a very big and very good-looking blond who was Central's foremost tackle and captain of the football and the rhetoric teams. A six-letter man. Lots of money, drove a Mercedes-Benz, and lived on Gold Hill. An A-minus average. A clear and tanned complexion. Naturally, he was pinned to Sheila, probably in more ways than one, Jim thought. But reliable reports said he was cheating on her. He'd even been seen in a nightclub in the nearby city of Warren with Angie "BlowJob" Calorick.
Seeing him pat the egg-shaped cheek of Sheila's ass made Jim want to puke.
He slammed his locker door shut with a big bang. Sheila looked away from Basing and at him. She quit smiling. Then she turned her head back to The Winner. She smiled again.
Sheila baby, you think he's Jesus H. Christ Himself! I'd like to crucify him, preferably with rusty nails that wouldn't be hammered through only his hands and feet. Wouldn't make any difference, though. She'd still look at me like I was a leper. "Unclean! Unclean!"
Jim sang softly to himself as he trudged down the hall toward Biology 201. It was his own creation, titled "Here's Looking Up at You."
Scruff me, scurve me,
Deck me out with pimples and fleas.
Feed me beans, then bitch about
Gas a-boiling in your face.
Step on me, and call me flat.
Squeeze me dry, and call me husk.
Say I got no class at all!
Trip-hammer sky's ramming me down,
Knocking the dandruff off my head,
Thumpa-thumpa-thumping me,
Drilling rock and liquid iron.
Earthworms, moles, and buried bones,
God, the Devil, Mrs. Grundy,
Who's not looking down at
Spinning in the core of Earth?
Any way from here is up.
Can't believe that's not a lie.
Every way looks down to me.
Raunch me, sleaze me,
Rip my soul with taloned scorn.
Call me ragged, light a candle,
Say for me a ragged mass.
Scruff me, scurve me,
Deck me out with pimples and fleas.
He followed Bob and Sam into the big classroom and took a chair in the rear row corner with the other losers. There was the usual loud talk, poking fun at each other, sailing paper airplanes, and throwing spitballs. Then silence and rigidity came down like a guillotine blade as the aged but not venerable Mister Lewis "Holy Roller" Hunks walked in. Grim and crusty and obnoxiously religious described Mister Hunks. Add to that that he was a creationist who was forced by law to teach evolution, though it was called "development," and you had one frustrated and miserable white-haired old man.
Hunks checked off the students present and absent as if he were taking the roll call on the Day of Judgment. After pronouncing each name, he looked up from behind very thick glasses. He grimaced when he spoke the name of a student he did not like, and he smiled thinly when he uttered the name of a student who was not going to Flunkers' Hell. He smiled three times.
Having designated a favorite student to carry a list of the absent to the principal's office, Hunks launched into today's lecture. It continued the previous lecture, which was on the reproductive system of the frog. Jim tried to listen intently and to take notes because the subject was interesting. But his stomach hurt, and he had a headache. To make conditions worse. Hunks managed to combine droning with a squeaky voice. Jim felt like he was on an oxcart with an unlubricated wheel going across a flat and treeless plain. The view was putting him to sleep, but the wheel was keeping him awake.
Sam Wyzak, who was sitting by Jim, leaned over and whispered, "I'm going to fall asleep. Whyn't you tell him he's full of shit? At least we won't be bored to death."
"Why don't you tell him?" Jim whispered back.
"Hell, I don't know nothing about this and couldn't care less. You're the expert. You start the fireworks. Old Sam just wanta make things jump. Geeve eet to heem!"
A silence in the room alerted Jim. He straightened up and looked at Mister Hunks. The old guy was glaring at him, and the students had turned their heads to look at him and Sam. Jim's heart felt like a squirrel thrown into a wheelcage. It began running just to stay in one place. The thuds of its feet against metal were also drum signals. "Man, you done it now!"
"Well, Mister Grimson, Mister Wyzak," Hunks squeaked. "Would you mind sharing with us your private thoughts about the subject at hand?"
Jim said, "It was nothing."
His own voice was squeaky. He was angry because he had been caught, and he was angry with himself because he was afraid to speak out against Hunks. The old man would make a fool of him for sure.
"Nothing, Mister Grimson? Nothing? You two were disturbing me and the class because you were just making nonsensical noises? Or perhaps you were imitating the apes you claim you're descended from? Were you imitating ape calls, you two?"
Jim's heart beat even harder, and his stomach swung back and forth, sloshing acid from one end to the other. But, trying to look cool, he stood up. He also was trying to keep his voice steady.
"Well," he said. He paused to clear his suddenly phlegmed throat. "No, we weren't imitating ape language. We. . ."
"Ape language?" Hunks said. "Apes don't have a language!"
"Well, I mean. . . ape signals, whatever."
Sam whispered, "Umgawa!" He writhed with silent laughter.
"When your fellow simian recovers from his fit, you may continue," Hunks said. He squinted through his thick glasses as if they were a telescope and he, the astronomer, had just discovered some worthless asteroid that had no business being where it was.
Sam quit moving, but he was biting his lips to keep from exploding with laughter.
"Uh," Jim said, and he cleared his throat again. "Uh, I had some thoughts on what you just said, uh, that about life developing, no, I mean originating, in the primal soup, and its, uh, statical, I mean, statistical improbability. But I got to think more about that before I say anything.
"What I was thinking was about something you said last week. Remember? You, we, talked about why, for example, uh, dog embryos and human embryos were so similar. In the early stages of their development, anyway. You explained why human embryos have tails, that is, according to the theory of development. You evidently didn't believe that theory. Then you tried to explain why, uh, if the Creator made all creatures in just a couple of days. . . you said, you tried to explain why all male mammals have nipples even though they don't need them, why, uh, flightless insects have wings."
His throat felt dry. Hunks's grin was mean, mean, mean. The students were watching him. Some had tittered when he mentioned nipples.
"Also, why do snakes have rudimental. . . rudimentary. . . limbs when they never need them any more than males need nipples and insects that can't fly need wings? They wouldn't have nipples, limbs, and wings if they were created in a single day. You said that the wings, nipples, and limbs were created for the sake of symmetry. The Creator was an artist, and It had to make Its creatures symmetrical."
Jim referred to the Creator as It because it bugged Hunks. Now his voice was stronger and deeper, and he was speaking without the awkward hesitations. He was on a roll. Devil take the consequences.
"That 'symmetry' explanation, if you'll pardon me, Mister Hunks, doesn't ring true. It doesn't seem to be logical. Anyway, I was thinking about it. Here's what I'd like you to explain to me, sir. If the Creator was so keen on 'symmetry,' why, on the day of Creation, didn't It make males who also had female genitals and vice versa? Why don't us men have vaginas, too, and why don't women have penises?"
Laughter from the students. Explosion from Mister Hunks.
"Shut up and sit down!"
<
br /> "But, sir!"
"I said shut up and sit down!"
Jim should have been happy because he had triumphed. But he was shaking with rage. Hunks was just like his father. When he had lost in a battle of words, he refused to listen any more, and he evoked the gag law that adults used against children. It was unappealable to a higher court because Hunks was also that court.
Fortunately, the end-of-the-class bell rang just then. Hunks looked as if he was going to have a stroke, but he did not tell Jim to see him in his office that afternoon. Jim felt as if his own blood vessels were going to erupt. However, a few seconds later, as he walked down the hall, he began to feel exultance mixing with the rage. He had really given it to the old fart, the living fossil, the Ku Klux Klanner of Kristians.
Bob Pellegrino and Sam Wyzak were walking with him through the crowd of students. Bob said, "It don't matter if you win every argument with that dirty old man. He's gonna flunk your ass."
Jim understood the description of Hunks. To the young, anybody over sixty was dirty. No matter how physically clean the old were in actuality, they were dirty because they were close to death. Old Man Death was the ultimate in filthiness, and anybody in his neighborhood was deeply soiled.
There was also something that Jim could not know then and would not know until much later. That was that Hunks was much closer to the truth than the evolutionists.
Chapter 8
LUNCH HOUR CAME. Jim had no money to buy food, and his anger had subsided enough for him to feel very hungry. Sam Wyzak split his lunch with him, and Bob Pellegrino gave him half a tuna fish sandwich and half a pickle. Jim cooled off even more during Mister Lum's course in Advanced English and Composition. This was the only subject in which he had a B average. Well, pretty close to a B. A few A's on the compositions he was going to write, and he would get a B average. But if Jim didn't ever master the difference between a dangling participle and a dangling particle, he wouldn't pass the course.