Bubblegum and Kipling. Tom Mayer
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probably know by tomorrow,” I said. “I imagine Johnny’ll tell me about it.”
“I hope so, but one thing’s for sure, this threatening has got to stop. It’s a terrible thing when a boy can’t walk home from school without being molested.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If Johnny is intractable you can tell him I said that, and you can also tell the young man that I’ll have to call him in here if he doesn’t shape up.”
“I will.”
“Remember,” Mr. Bascomb said, “we’ll settle this with gloves if we have to. I don’t like violence, but we’ll do it that way if necessary.”
I told Mr. Bascomb that I understood, and he said that was fine, and then we talked awhile about what a fine woman my mother is. He said to tell her he was hoping to have a long chat with her at the next PTA meeting. My mother couldn’t stand PTA meetings as a rule, said they were unbelievably boring and only went to them in election years, but I told Mr. Bascomb I’d tell her what he had said. Then I told him I knew she looked forward to the meetings because he ran them so well. I said she said he was an accomplished parliamentarian. Mr. Bascomb puffed up and said he was terribly flattered, which he obviously was, and he said he certainly hoped we could solve this thing between Johnny and Melvin Oglethorpe. I said I was sure we could, and then I said I had to be going because I had to get to ball practice.
When I got outside it was four-thirty, and I saw I would be way late to practice so I decided to skip it. I wasn’t overconfident, but I knew I was the only good right-handed pitcher Apodaca’s General Store had, which was why the manager, Mr. Martin Lopez, picked me first choice in the Little League player draft. Also because I could catch, and you can never carry enough good catchers. Apodaca’s had Reuben Montoya and Sammy Oliver, both good pitchers, though Sammy was mostly a junk man, but both lefties, and I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble making the team. I had a fastball that dropped, so I could be used in relief, and that was working for me, too. I figured I could tell Mr. Martin Lopez I got kept after school and he would believe me. He wasn’t overly bright about anything except baseball.
I ran home and found my brother in the TV room watching TV. He was waiting for Crusader Rabbit, a five-minute cartoon serial, and I knew I couldn’t talk to him about anything until after that. Personally I always found Crusader Rabbit very frustrating, because they spent three minutes out of the five telling you what happened the last time, and you had to watch almost every show anyhow or you lost the thread. Each story went on for about a year, and Johnny watched every one while my mother kept waiting for him to outgrow it.
When Crusader Rabbit was over Johnny turned off the TV set and got up on a straight-back chair and began punching the bag. The TV room was also the playroom, and my father kept a light punching bag there. My father was the two-time middleweight champion of the Australian Army, and he once knocked out “Bopo” Quintana, the light-heavyweight champion of the Southwest and a nationally ranked contender at the time, with one punch in a street fight on the Plaza. I have a newspaper clipping to prove it. “Bopo” said something vile about my mother, and my father knocked him through the plate-glass window at Woolworth’s.
My father didn’t fight in the gym any more, but he punched the bag for a half hour two or three times a week to keep his eye sharp, and did some roadwork on Sundays when he got the chance. He could hit very hard, they said, had shoulders like a heavyweight, and never let himself get above one seventy. His only weakness as a fighter, something not his fault, was that he had a long straight brittle nose that got broken the first time anybody even jabbed it hard.
Johnny banged away at the bag for a while, not saying anything, and doing an awful job of it. Even when he was standing on the chair the bag was way too high for him, and he didn’t know how to hit it. My father showed me a little about boxing when I was a kid, and I used to spar and fool around a lot with him, but Johnny was never interested and my father didn’t make him learn.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“Practicing,” Johnny said, and almost fell off the chair.
“Don’t hook it so much,” I said. “Don’t try to hit it so often. Let it bounce.”
“Like this?” Johnny hooked it again so that it bounced back at him on a diagonal.
“No. Jab it,” I said.
“How?”
I got up and shadow-boxed a few jabs for him. “Straight. Like this. Left, left. Cross with the right when you got him set up.”
“I’ll try it.” He jabbed on the bag a few times, and it went back and forth on a straight line so that he could keep hitting it.
“That’s better,” I said.
He jabbed it again.
“Whatcha doing this for?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” he said.
“What for? Come on and tell.”
“Feel like it.”
“Come on, Ukey,” I said. “Don’t try to con me.” I used to call him the Ukulele Baby, because he was always making sounds like a ukulele, and it got shortened to Ukey. I had lots of other nicknames for him too.
“I feel like doing it,” he said.
“That’s bull,” I said.
“All right. I don’t feel like doing it.” He jabbed the bag twice, the second time nicely, and then he hooked with his right. The chair slid when he swung, and he had to grab the back of it.
“Hit it straight,” I said. “Jab it straight, but throw the right straight too. Straight line is the shortest distance between two points. A straight punch gets there first and hurts the most. Hookers are nothin’ but brawlers. Boxer with a punch can lick a hooker any day.”
“Is this it?” He threw a straight right, but it hit the side of the bag instead of the center.
“That’s the idea. Now why are you doing this?”
“I want to.”
“Ha, ha,” I said. “I know better.”
He stopped punching and looked over at me. Then he started punching again.
“I hear you’re out to get Melvin Oglethorpe,” I said.
That stopped him completely. “Who says?”
“Mr. Bascomb,” I said and smiled at him.
“No kidding, Jerry?”
I nodded. “Mr. Bascomb says you’re having a blood feud with him. His mother called up and complained about you being so big and tough.”
“He’s chicken,” my brother said.
“How come you’re sore at him?” I asked. “Mr. Bascomb told me to find out, but I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to. What happened?”
“He didn’t do anything to me,” Johnny said.
“Aw, come on,” I said.
“Nothin’, really.”
“Ukey, you’re lying,” I said.
Johnny looked at the bag, and hit it once. He didn’t hit it again, just stood there on the chair looking at it until it stopped swinging, and then he turned to me and said, “I can’t tell you.”
“I won’t say anything,” I said. “Honest.”
“Yes you will.”
“No I won’t. You can count on me.”
“I’d like to tell you,” he said. “But I can’t tell anybody.”
“Well, give me some idea.”
“He insulticated