Эд Макбейн - Barking at Butterflies and other stories

Richard kicked at Vota, feeling the heavy leather of his shoes crack against the boy’s shins. Miller was up and fumbling for Richard’s arms. A sudden slice of pain started at Richard’s shoulder, careened down the length of his arm. Cloth gave way with a rasping scratch, and blood flashed bright against the gray tweed.

From the floor, Richard saw the knife flash back again, poised in Vota’s hand ready to strike. He saw Miller’s fists doubled and hard, saw the animal look on Vota’s face and again the knife threatening and sharp, drenched now with blood, dripping on the brown, cold, wooden floor.

The noise grew louder and Richard grasped in his mind for a picture of the Roman arena, tried to rise, felt pain sear through his right arm as he put pressure on it. He’s cut me, he thought with panic. Vota has cut me. And the screaming reached a wild crescendo, hands moved with terrible swiftness, eyes gleamed with molten fury, bodies squirmed, and hate smothered everything in a sweaty, confused, embarrassed embrace.

This is it, Richard thought, this is it.

“Leave him alone, you crazy jerk,” Serubi was shouting.

Leave who alone, Richard wondered. Who? I wasn’t...

“Lousy sneak,” Levy shouted. “Lousy, dirty sneak.”

Please, Richard thought. Please.

Levy seized Miller firmly and pushed him backward against a desk. Richard watched him dazedly, his right arm burning with pain. He saw Busco through a maze of moving, struggling bodies, Busco who was caught cheating, saw Busco smash a book against Vota’s knife hand. The knife clattered to the floor with a curious sound. Vota’s hand reached out and Di Pasco stepped on it with the heel of his foot. The knife disappeared in a shuffle of hands, but Vota no longer had it. Richard stared at the bare, brown spot on the floor where the knife had been.

Whose chance is it now, he wondered? Whose turn to slice the teacher?

Miller tried to struggle off the desk where Levy had him pinned. Brown, a Negro boy, brought his fist down heavily on Miller’s nose. He wrenched the larger boy’s head back with one hand, and again brought his fist down fiercely.

A slow recognition trickled into Richard’s confused thoughts. Through dazzled eyes, he watched.

Vota scrambled to his feet and lunged at him. A solid wall seemed to rise before him as Serubi and Gomez flung themselves against the onrushing form and threw it back. They tumbled onto Vota, holding his arms, lashing out with excited fists.

They’re fighting for me! No, Richard reasoned, no. But yes, they’re fighting for me! Against Miller. Against Vota. For me. For me, oh my God, for me.

His eyes blinked nervously as he struggled to his feet.

“Let’s... let’s take them down to the principal,” he said, his voice low.

Antoro moved closer to him, his eyes widening as they took in the livid slash that ran the length of Richard’s arm.

“Man, that’s some cut,” he said.

Richard touched his arm lightly with his left hand. It was soggy and wet, the shirt and jacket stained a dull brownish-red.

“My brother got cut like that once,” Ganigan offered.

The boys were still holding Miller and Vota, but they no longer seemed terribly interested in the troublemakers.

For an instant, Richard felt a twinge of panic. For that brief, terrible instant he imagined that the boys hadn’t really come to his aid at all, that they had simply seen an opportunity for a good fight and had seized upon it. He shoved the thought aside, began fumbling for words.

“I... I think I’d better take them down to Mr. Stemplar,” he said. He stared at the boys, trying to read their faces, searching for something in their eyes that would tell him he had at last reached them, had at last broken through the wall. He could tell nothing. Their faces were blank, their eyes emotionless.

He wondered if he should thank them. If only he knew. If he could only hit upon the right thing to say, the thing to cement it all.

“I’ll... I’ll take them down. Suppose... you... you all go to lunch now.”

“That sure is a mean cut,” Julian said.

“Yeah,” Ganigan agreed.

“You can all go to lunch,” Richard said. “I want to take Miller and Vota...”

The boys didn’t move. They stood there with serious faces, solemnly watching Richard.

“... to... the... principal,” Richard finished.

“A hell of a mean cut,” Gomez said.

Busco chose his words carefully, and he spoke slowly. “Maybe we better just forget about the principal, huh? Maybe we oughta just go to lunch?”

Richard saw the smile appear on Miller’s face, and a new weary sadness lumped into his throat.

He did not pretend to understand. He knew only that they had fought for him and that now, through some unfathomable code of their own, had turned on him again. But he knew what had to be and he could only hope that eventually they would understand why he had to do it.

“All right,” he said firmly, “let’s break it up. I’m taking these two downstairs.”

He shoved Miller and Vota ahead of him, fully expecting to meet the resistance of another wall, a wall of unyielding bodies. Instead, the boys parted to let him through, and Richard walked past them with his head high. A few minutes ago, he would have taken this as a sign that the wall had broken. That was a few minutes ago.

Now, he was not at all surprised to hear a high falsetto pipe up behind him, “Oh, Daddy-oh! You’re a hee -ro!”

In March of last year, I wrote a letter to your magazine which you subsequently published in May. You will recall that I described myself as a bald-headed though virile man of seventy-six with a walrus mustache and a preference for well-built redheaded midgets (female). In that letter, I related the story of my first and only sexual experience with a redheaded midget, and told of the ecstasy I had derived from that brief encounter. I explained that whereas I was now married to a very tall blond woman (five feet five inches), I nonetheless had never forgotten that fleeting affair so many years ago, and was still unable to quell my longings and urgings for female midgets with scarlet tresses. While praising abundantly the various women of height and undeniable girth who have graced the pages of your fine magazine, I asked at that time if your plans for the future included running a centerfold photograph of a nude minikin with an auburn thatch. I also asked if any of your readers shared my feelings about midgets with ruddy locks.

I certainly did not anticipate the overwhelming tide of letters that were published in your July issue, most of them complaining that my comments about female midgets, especially redheaded ones, reflected nothing but the basest sort of male chauvinism. I had not felt, nor do I now feel, that my admitted lust for miniature redheaded women is in any way sexist, and I was quite frankly surprised and annoyed by these accusations, and by the suggestion from one of your readers (Dr. J. M., Seattle, Washington) that my “aberration” (as he called it) was nothing but a role-reversal acting-out of “the Snow White syndrome.” His diagnosis continues to baffle me. Full-blown sex in a king-sized bed with a perfectly formed little woman is hardly the same thing as cavorting with a gang of gnomic old men. I would like to call the good doctor’s attention to the definition of “midget” in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language : “An extremely small person who is otherwise normally proportioned.”

Needless to say, the storm of protest quite unsettled me. Until then, I had enormously enjoyed your “Letters” column, which I found to be spirited, uninhibited, and literary besides. Such elevated dialogue, it seemed to me, was necessary in a free society, where sexual acts considered strange, bizarre, perverse, or merely monstrous might be revealed as natural and normal through a sincere exchange of ideas among consenting adults. I was surprised to learn, for example, how many men are sexually attracted to women with back problems, especially those wearing braces. Or, as a further example, I would never have dreamt that certain types of women are irresistibly drawn to men who have undergone surgery for the removal of knee cartilage. (For my tardy enlightenment, I thank the young lady who signed her letter M. S., Dallas, Texas, in your giant holiday issue.) And I was thoroughly amazed to learn how many couples use flavored yogurt to enliven their sexual encounters in or out of bed. My own aversion to yogurt remains undiminished, but an understanding of the needs and gratifications of others surely goes a long way toward an understanding of oneself. Returning to the point, the angry and hysterical letters you published concerning the apparently taboo subject of sexual intercourse between a female midget and a male of normal size (I myself am five feet eight and one-half inches tall, and built accordingly) shocked me, dismayed me, and caused me to reassess with regret what are surely preponderantly puritanical attitudes in this nation. It was not until your August issue, however, that the real problem started.