Living with the hawk Read Free

Jordan, “they need to get knocked around some before they’re worth a shit.”
    When I looked for Blake, I saw his pants folded on the bench, a bucking pad on top of them, but he was gone. The sweater in his locker hung slack and crooked, the “C” on the sleeve just barely visible.

    Way back when I was in grade four and my brother in grade seven, Rufus Nickerson was the toughest kid I’d ever seen. The biggest bully too. He lived in a ramshackle house down by the river, the house looking as if it had been nailed together with plywood salvaged from the dump. The backyard was always filled with stripped-down cars and trucks, most of them rusted-out hulks with their hoods open. His dad collected garbage for the city, but people said he could do more with a motor than any mechanic in town. Rufus was in grade eight and he ruled Lord Tennyson Elementary School. Later on, when I was in high school, I wondered if carting around a name like Rufus wasn’t what made him so tough — and so quick to pick on smaller kids.
    My problem was I didn’t figure that out in grade four.
    A bunch of us little kids had stayed after school to play in the snow. All afternoon, whenever Mrs. Booker was writing on the board, we’d gaze out the classroom windows, our attention held by the thick snow floating down, the houses on the other side of the schoolyard slowly vanishing in a drifting haze of white. As soon as the bell rang, we threw on our coats and boots, and rushed outside, stamping out a huge pie in the fresh snow of the schoolyard; we were running the circle, playing tag when Rufus walked by and body-checked my best friend, Evan Morgan, into the snow. “Rufus Doofus,” I said — under my breath.
    Or so I thought.
    â€œShut your face, kid!” Although he sounded angry, he looked like a starving tramp who’d just been offered a free burger. He tackled me then, drove me backwards, flattened me, landing on top of me, all his weight bearing down. What I remember is gasoline fumes. His clothes smelled of gasoline, and I thought that I would choke. I tried to wiggle free, but he was too big for me. He heaved himself up, got his knees planted on my arms, swearing, leaned towards me, and hawked a gob at my face. I wrenched my head sideways, but it caught me on the ear. Then he laughed and began to slap me. I was squirming and howling, my arms pinned and useless, his gob on my ear, fumes around us like a gas station.
    If I’d had a match I would’ve set him on fire.
    And I couldn’t even hit back. Worse, I was starting to cry. Like a baby — right there in the schoolyard where everybody’d see me. Both cheeks flaming, eyes stinging, I heard a loud whomp, saw through a blur of tears his head snap forward, a spray of snow and straw like a halo above him, his tuque knocked off, a string of snot swinging from his nose.
    He rolled off me, and Blake was there, standing over him, a broom in his hands. A broom. It was at least another second before I realized he must’ve been at the outdoor rink, playing broomball.
    â€œDon’t move,” said Blake, his voice surprisingly calm. “You ever touch my brother again, the two of us’ll kick the shit out of you. Then I’m gonna hold you down and he’s gonna ram this whole broom up your ass. Till it comes out your mouth. Get the idea? Now take off.”
    Rufus was a good two inches taller than Blake, and I knew he was going to pulverize my brother. When Nickerson stood up, he was breathing hard, his mouth hanging open, as if he was in shock or something. “Who gives a shit about either one of you?” he said. Backing off three steps, he turned around and walked away. Slowly. So everyone could see he wasn’t scared at all.
    After that, Rufus used to give me the hip whenever he passed me in a crowded hall at school, always just enough of a shove to remind me that he could flatten me anytime he chose, but