Chasing the Bear (8 page)

There was a dance in the school cafeteria after the last game, the week before Thanksgiving, and I took Jeannie. Even though she wasn’t exactly my girlfriend. There was cider and doughnuts and some pumpkins and some big paper turkeys and music on the speaker system. We danced a little. I didn’t really know how to dance. Neither did she. In fact, neither did anyone else in the room. Most of the boys were interested in dancing close. Most of the girls were trying not to get stepped on. Everyone bumped into each other a lot. Standing around the rim, several teachers watched us carefully to make sure fun didn’t break out in some unacceptable way.

“Do you know any Mexicans?” Jeannie said to me.

“Mexicans?” I said. “You mean in Mexico?”

“No,” Jeannie said. “Around here.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Guy named Alex Rios, he’s a mason, works with us on a lot of jobs.”

“Us?”

“You know, I work with my father and my uncles in the summer,” I said. “And a lot of weekends during school. One summer they weren’t building anything, so I worked a couple months with a landscaping company run by Mr. Felice. Roberto Felice. All the workers but me were Mexican.”

“So you don’t hate Mexicans,” Jeannie said.

“Like everybody else,” I said. “Like some, don’t like others.”

“My father hated all Mexicans,” she said.

“Your father probably hated all everything,” I said.

We bumped and stumbled our way around the dance floor again.

“Why you asking me about Mexicans?” I said.

The music stopped, so we got some doughnuts and some cider and went and sat on a couple of folding chairs.

“We never had any money,” Jeannie said. “We always lived in poor neighborhoods.”

“Your old man never worked,” I said.

“That’s right,” Jeannie said. “So my mom had to work. She was a cocktail waitress at the country club, and it meant she had to work nights.”

“So who took care of you?”

“Mrs. Lopez,” Jeannie said.

I nodded.

“She lived next door,” Jeannie said. “And she had a little boy, about my age. Aurelio.”

“Aurelio Lopez,” I said.

“You know him?”

“I see him around school,” I said.

“Mrs. Lopez’s husband is a busboy at the club, and he had to work nights too, so I would stay with Mrs. Lopez every night.”

“How was that?”

“She was great. She is great. She’s like . . .”

Jeannie stopped and took a little breath.

“I love her,” she said.

“That’s nice,” I said.

“She’s like my other mom,” Jeannie said.

“Maybe that’s why you turned out so good,” I said.

Jeannie nodded.

“You don’t like my mom,” she said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you don’t,” Jeannie said. “I know. Lotta people don’t like her. She drinks a lot . . . and she’s man crazy. I bet your father doesn’t like her. Or your uncles.”

I shrugged.

“She’s had a hard life,” Jeannie said. “But she’s my mom and I love her too.”

“Good,” I said.

One of the teachers announced over the sound system that this was the last dance. And to be sure when we left to take all of our stuff with us. No one would be permitted back in the school. And anyone who left anything would have to reclaim it at the principal’s office in the morning.

Most of the kids danced the last dance. But we didn’t. Jeannie wasn’t finished talking.

She said, “Aunt Octavia, that’s what I call her, told me a bunch of kids beat Aurelio up.”

“What for?”

“For being Mexican,” she said. “Said they called him names, you know, greaser, spick.”

“That’s lousy,” I said.

“Mr. Lopez says he finds out who did it, he’s gonna kill him.”

“You know Mr. Lopez?” I said.

“A little,” Jeannie said. “He works all the time. Aunt Octavia says he’s crazy mad. And she says a lot of Mexican kids are getting beat up like Aurelio.”

“For being Mexican?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Lopez seems like a nice enough kid,” I said.

“He is. He’s not a jock or a tough guy or anything like you. But he’s sweet. He’s teaching me to play chess.”

“How’s he feel about all this?” I said.

“He’s afraid to come to school.”

I nodded.

“And where do I come in?” I said. “Or are we just making conversation?”

“I told him you’d help him,” Jeannie said.

Jeannie
and I sat with Aurelio Lopez on a bench outside a bodega in the Mexican neighborhood that everyone called Chihuahua. He was a smallish kid, slim, with longish black hair and big dark eyes. One eye was bruised and swollen half shut.

“I don’t even think of myself as a Mexican,” he said. “I don’t wake up in the morning and think, you are Mexican, you dog. My father came up here before I was born to work in the mine. I never even been to Mexico.”

I nodded.

“This stuff happen to a lot of Mexican kids or just you?” I said.

Aurelio shrugged.

“I’m small,” he said. “I’m easy to pick on.”

“So,” I said. “How many guys are there?”

“I don’t know, about ten, I guess,” Aurelio said. “They pick on the girls too.”

“Mexican girls?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“They ever tease you?” I said to Jeannie.

“Sometimes,” she said. “When I’m with Aurelio. They call me names.”

“Like what?”

“Spick lover,” she said. “Beaner girl.”

I made a face.

“So who are these guys?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Aurelio said. “I don’t hang with any Anglos except Jeannie.”

“Well, I guess we’ll probably find out,” I said.

“I wish I was a tough guy,” Aurelio said. “Like you, Spenser. But I’m not.”

“Everybody gotta be what they are,” I said.

Jeannie looked at me.

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“I can walk to and from school with you every day,” I said to Aurelio. “If you want.”

Aurelio nodded.

“But what are you going to do against ten guys?” he said.

“Excellent question,” I said.

“Do you have an excellent answer?” Jeannie said.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Let
me guess, you took it on,” Susan said.

“Yep.”

She smiled at me like a mother at an unusual child. “You never thought about speaking to the school principal?” she said.

“Oh, God, no,” I said.

“Not done?” Susan said.

“Not by fourteen-year-old boys,” I said. “Wouldn’t have done any good anyway.”

Susan nodded.

“Schools are notoriously ineffective,” she said, “at the prevention of bullying.”

“And most other things,” I said.

“You’ve never been a fan of the school system,” Susan said.

“True,” I said. “And this was a kind of systematic racial bullying. They would have had an assembly and the principal would have told everybody not to do it.”

“And all the bigots and bullies would have said, ‘Oh, gee, okay,’” Susan said.

“And beat the hell out of Aurelio Lopez,” I said, “as soon as class got out.”

“Probably,” Susan said. “How about the police?”

“Tell you the truth, I never thought of it,” I said.

“No,” Susan said. “Of course not. I can remember how hermetically sealed adolescence was.”

“Even for well-mannered Jewish girls growing up in Swampscott?” I said.

“Even for them. Life was you and the other kids,” she said. “Adults were remote.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“So you decided to protect him,” she said.

“I did.”

“Fourteen years old,” she said.

“Almost fifteen,” I said.

She smiled.

“Oh, well, that makes it different,” she said. “Were you reading
King Arthur
at the time?”

“No,” I said. “But they read it to me when I was about twelve—the Thomas Malory one, as I recall. Not Tennyson.”

“And you swallowed it all,” Susan said.

“Yep.”

“And you still do,” she said.

“Yep.”

“Knight-errant,” she said.

“There are worse careers,” I said.

The afternoon was dwindling, and the sun was at our backs. Susan smiled and patted my hand.

“Far worse,” she said. “Did you have a plan?”

“Not really,” I said.

“You were going to just plow along,” she said, “and assume you could handle what came your way.”

“Pretty much,” I said.

“Like you’ve done all your life.”

“It’s worked okay so far,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Did your father and your uncles know?”

“Yes, I talked it over with them.”

“Even though they were adults,” Susan said.

“Not the same,” I said. “There wasn’t much adult-child stuff going on at my house. I was one member of a family of four. They were the other three.”

“No wonder,” Susan said, “you’re not quite like other men.”

“That a good thing?” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. “I think so.”

“You
feel like you gotta do this,” Cash said.

“Yes.”

“How you gonna go about it?” Patrick said.

“I’ll walk with him to school and back home and see what happens,” I said.

We were in the kitchen, at the table, except my father, who was at the stove with a chicken stew.

“One thing,” my father said from the stove. “No weapons.”

I nodded.

“Anybody flashes a weapon, you get the hell out of there and come tell us.”

I nodded.

“Your word?” my father said.

“My word,” I said.

“Okay,” my father said.

“Sounds like the kid’s gonna be outnumbered, Sam,” Cash said.

“He wanted us to help him, he’d a asked us,” my father said. “He knows how to fight. He don’t seem to scare easy.”

“And we can’t be going out and beating the hell out of fifteen-year-old kids,” Patrick said.

Cash nodded.

My father brought the pot from the stove and began to serve the stew.

“And this Aurelio kid shouldn’t have to fear for his life every day at school,” my father said.

“No,” Cash said. “He shouldn’t.”

We all ate some of the stew. Pearl sat close by my leg staring at my plate, just in case.

Patrick put down his fork and drank some beer from the bottle and put the beer down and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

“You won’t have much trouble with one-on-one,” he said, and grinned. “You been well trained.”

I nodded.

“But if you gotta go up against a bunch of guys, there’s some tactics to think about.”

“You’ve all taught me how to fight more than one guy,” I said. “How to punch and pivot and punch and slide. You been drilling me for years.”

“That’s fighting two people,” Cash said. “Maybe even three.”

“But with a bunch of people,” Patrick said, “you gotta pick out the leader.”

“And separate him from the others,” Cash said.

“So it’s just you and him, one-on-one,” Patrick said. “Not you against ten.”

I nodded. Pearl rested her head on my thigh.

“Any kind of confrontation,” my father said, “you need to manage it. Don’t let the other guy manage it.”

“If I can,” I said.

“If you can,” my father said.

“And if I can’t?”

“You run,” my father said.

“Run?”

“Sure, running is part of managing the situation. You’re outnumbered or outmanned, run, come back to it when you can manage it.”

“I can’t just run,” I said.

My father looked at my uncles, then back at me.

“We been teaching you how to fight,” my father said. “We have not been teaching you how to be a fool.”

Cash and Patrick nodded. All three of them looked at me. I nodded.

“You’re a tough kid,” my father said. “It’s probably in your bloodlines. You’re going to be a tough man.”

“And pretty soon,” Patrick said. “You’ve grown up a lot since you went down the river with Jeannie.”

“Where,” Cash said, “you were brave enough, but you also had to run away from Luke in order to manage the situation.”

“Same with the black bear,” Patrick said.

It all suddenly seemed to kick in.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”

“So do what you need to do,” my father said. “And know that you got a place to run to and backup if you need it.”

I looked around the table at the three of them.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve always known that.”

I
met Aurelio at the head of his street and walked the ten blocks to school with him. He was pale and swallowed often.

“Scared?” I said.

“They hate me,” he said.

“I bet they don’t,” I said. “It’s just that they can pick on you, so they do.”

“But why?”

“Some kids are like that,” I said.

“Why don’t they leave other kids alone?” Aurelio said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose it makes them feel important.”

As we reached the school yard, a kid named Turk Ferris, that I played football with, yelled, “Hey,
maricón
!”

“What’s
‘maricón’
mean?” I said to Aurelio.

“Pansy,” he said.

Another guy I knew, Carl Dodge, said, “Hey, Spenser, how come you’re walking with the little greaser?”

“Aurelio,” I said.

“Okay,” Carl said. “How come you’re walking with Aurelio?”

“He’s a friend of mine,” I said.

Carl shrugged. Aurelio and I went on into the school and were in our homeroom when the bell rang. Aurelio sat up front. I sat in the back. Turk Ferris sat beside me. English was our first class. Mr. Hartley was the teacher. We were reading
A Tale of Two Cities.
Turk opened his book and pretended to be reading it while he talked to me.