George Martin - Deuces Down

“Well…” Sister Aquilonia stroked her vermillion chin. She used to be a Negro, until the wild card virus had turned her a striking orangey-reddish. Some of the boys said that it had changed her body in other interesting ways, but it was impossible to tell for certain because of her voluminous habit. She did, Tommy noted, smell rather sweet, but he wasn’t sure if that was her actual odor, or some kind of perfume. Nuns, he knew, generally didn’t use perfume, but neither did he remember her smelling so nice before. He thought of complimenting her on it, but something told him not to.

“I gotta get to Ebbets today, Sister,” Tommy pressed his case. “I gotta take advantage of this opportunity. My Dad went through a lot of trouble to get me the pass.”

Tommy’s father was a salesman for a Cadillac dealership over in Manhattan. He was a real wheeler dealer. He knew how to get a little sugar for himself when he closed the deal, or in this case, for his son. Even though Tommy was only in the ninth grade there was no doubt that he was going to be a reporter when he grew up, and he was already working hard to establish his credentials. The Weekly Gospel was only his first step, as he saw it, on his way to journalistic immortality.

“No doubt,” Sister Aquilonia agreed.

Tommy knew he almost had her. “Think of it. I bet I’m the only reporter on a high school paper with a Series press pass. The Gospel will have an exclusive: Inside the World Series through the eyes of Thomas Downs.”

The idea of covering the Series appealed to him largely because it meant four days away from school, four days of freedom untrammeled by nuns and uniforms and kids mostly bigger than himself. Not that Tommy wasn’t a Dodger fan. There was hardly a boy breathing in the city who wasn’t a Dodger fan that summer. Cellar dwellers for as long as Tommy could remember, the Dodgers had somehow catapulted themselves out of the basement and had taken the National League East Division crown. Then they’d beaten the vaunted Milwaukee Braves in the first ever Divisional Series, and, as National League champions, were facing the heavily favored American League champs, the Orioles, in the World Series. They’d already split the first two games in Baltimore. The next three were scheduled Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for the Dodgers old park in Flatbush, a thirty minute subway ride from Sanguis Christi, in Queens.

“Well…” The nun considered options with agonizing deliberation. “Okay.” Tommy suppressed any signs of glee as Sister Aquilonia scribbled on a release form, tore it off the pad, and handed it to him. “Here’s a pass for the day-good for noon. That should give you plenty of time to get over to Brooklyn and run down your story.”

Tommy hid his disappointment. Only noon? He’d miss less than half the day? Well , he philosophized, that was better than nothing . Knowing he had to stay on the nun’s good side, he pasted a smile on his face. “Thanks, Sister. I’ll get a good story, you’ll see.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“I won’t let you down,” Tommy said, as he pushed open the classroom door and went into the corridor beyond. Let’s see , he thought, first period study hall. The penguin’s note will let me report late. No need to hurry .

Study hall was in the cafeteria. He didn’t hate it, but it was boring. You had to sit there for almost an hour, being quiet, at least pretending you were doing something. He went down the silent, empty corridor, his footsteps echoing loudly. At the intersection he showed his pass to the hall monitor, almost contemptuously. There was no lower form of life at Sanguis Christi than hall monitors. They were all brown noses.

The monitor checked his pass, waved him on. He went down the hall, past the second floor boy’s bathroom. Dare he go in, he wondered? Sometimes you could kill some time with the guys, but sometimes it wasn’t the best place to be, all depending on who was hanging. A sudden urge to pee decided him, and he pushed open the heavy door and ducked inside.

Almost immediately, he knew he’d made a mistake. By then it was too late to back away. That would only have compounded his mistake, making him look like a scaredy-cat, and he couldn’t afford to look like that.

The air was redolent with cigarette smoke, and something else. Tommy couldn’t define it, but he could smell the wrongness in the air, hidden in the cigarette smoke. He couldn’t define that smell, though the familiar odor had been popping up lately in unexpected, unexplained times and places. It was subtle. He couldn’t figure out where it came from. It was just sometimes there, tickling his nose and prodding his consciousness, as it was doing now.

“Hey, look,” one of the three said, “it’s Tommy boy.”

Tommy recognized him from around Christi. He was known to all, even the nuns, as Butch. The kids also called him Butch the Bully, but not to his face. He was a senior, much older than Tommy, who having skipped a year in grade school, was young for a freshman. If rumors were to be believed, Butch was older than anyone else in school. From what Tommy knew about him, he was dumb enough to have been held back a year, or even two. Dumb but big. And mean.

That was a bad combination.

“C’mere, Tommy boy.”

Tommy approached the three reluctantly. Butch was looking pseudo-serious. His sycophants were grinning. Not a good sign . Tommy knew that anything from a verbal hazing to a lunch money shakedown to a serious beating was in store. He also knew that it’d be worse if he ran and they had to chase him.

Butch straightened up from the sink he was leaning against. He expelled a long stream of smoke from his nostrils. It didn’t smell like smoke from a real cigarette. Maybe that was where the sweet smell was coming from.

“How come you’re not in class, Tommy boy?”

He had six inches and fifty pounds on Tommy. He was as menacing as any monster out of myth or movie, and much more frightening because he was there, he was real, and Tommy knew he could kick the shit out of him without breaking a sweat. That sudden, sweet order was strong around him. It was coming off him in waves. Not from the hand-rolled cigarette he was sucking on, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs, but from him. None of the others seemed to notice it. Somewhere in a corner of his frightened mind, Tommy wondered why.

“How come, Tommy?” Butch the Bully repeated, a harder edge in his already edgy voice.

“I have to pee,” Tommy said.

Butch looked at his sycophants. “He has to pee,” he repeated in an almost apt imitation of Tommy’s higher, lighter voice. He looked back at Tommy. “I hope you don’t pee your pants little boy.”

His voice was lilting, mocking. The other two laughed. “Yeah, pee your pants,” one of them said.

Tommy gulped, started to move backward, and Butch came towards him, his sycophants right at his heels. He had a bright, weird look in his too-focused eyes. Some bullies, Tommy knew, liked to have their henchmen deliver beatings for them. Butch looked like he liked to hand them out himself. “Do you need a diaper, little boy?” he said, grinning slow and lazy. “Only babies need diapers.”

I hate this place , Tommy thought, closing his eyes.

Butch towered over him. Backed up against the row of sinks, Tommy had nowhere to go. Butch grabbed Tommy’s shirt and pulled him up onto his toes with little effort. Tommy closed his eyes against the tears that suddenly sprang up in them. Would he rather take the humiliation of a pants-wetting, or the pain of a beating? Considering, though, that they’d probably kick his ass no matter what…