The War Against the Assholes Read Free Page B

commenced; we proceeded along its difficult path through ceaseless study and tireless inner effort ,wrote Erzmund. Close application and constant study. They advocated this sort of thing at Saint Cyprian’s. It was not possible for me to take them seriously. The pages smelled rich and fragile. They didn’t flake or tear. A few had faded brown stains on them: commas, periods. The book had one of those fake-silk tassels, as green as its cover, to mark your place. Not much bigger, as a whole, than a deck of cards. I carried it in my pocket during school hours, the gray hours of a private-school December. I like winter. Then again I like every season. Except spring. Blame my general love of life. I even enjoyed school. Though I was semi-hopeless at it. My grades had never risen out of their initial mediocrity. For which my parents had to pay. Twenty-nine thousand four hundred dollars, that year. I looked up how much Saint Cyprian’s charged after getting another C in Greek. They wanted me to go to school in an elevated environment.
    Greg Gilder returned the day of my nosebleed. He would not look me in the eye. He did stop calling me Morning Wood. The slice across the back of my hand healed. Gilder’s nose was now crooked, and one of his teeth, an incisor, shone out, much whiter than its neighbors. A cap or a replacement for the one I’d broken. Hob noticed this and did pantomimes of me flicking away the tooth fragment whenever he and I were in a room together. Which was all day except for biology. He had physics. Gilder stayed quiet. Frank Santone and Simon Canary stopped huddling around him. Coach Madigan let up on him. The worst of it was I could not relax and enjoy my triumph. That’s what it was. I make no apology. Gilder insulted me. I beat him, as he deserved. Nothing complex there. People get offended if you speak so openly about morality. His new tooth and crooked nose proved I was unsafe. Hob could have turned me in at any time. Coach Madigan still paired me with Gilder during gym. Which created unorthodox moral situations. I still took him down as cleanly as I could. He didn’t fight it anymore; he seized up as soon as he saw me coming. When I hit him he was totally rigid. He stayed rigid as he fell. Coach Madigan said nothing about it. He ordinarily would have, seeing a player lame out. But he was a man not lacking in compassion. Hence the trips to Yonkers. I liked his mother. She was tiny, pure-white haired, bent into a hook. She served us at the end of every help session baked goods (last time it had been brownies) and lemonade, no matter the season. Too sweet, both. We devoured them. You lack real discernment at that age. Youth , says Erzmund , is the greatest period of stupidity and suffering known to afflict humankind, and therefore when we left it we gave great thanks.
    â€œGreg Gilder’s back in town,” Hob told me. We were standing in a sheltered corner of Saint Cyprian’s inner courtyard. Beyond us the football field gleamed greenly. We stood next to a gray metal box. Heating or AC, I assumed. No real idea. “I noticed,” I said. “You ready for round two,” he said. “I don’t want to be a dick about it,” I said, “but that’s life.” “Have you not been reading? Aren’t you sick yet of thinking about life like that? Like it’s just a bunch of shit that occurs. Happens to strangers. To anyone. To you. Aren’t you sick of that?” “I have been reading,” I said, “but I don’t see what that has to do with your metaphysics.” “That’s a big word,” said Hob. He took out a deck of cards. “Are you ready for this,” he said. “I’m not not ready,” I said. I’d gotten in an hour of practice the night before, and two the night before that. Hob made a go-ahead gesture. I showed him THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING . This was the first trick in the green book.