Mike Meginnis - Fat Man and Little Boy

Three more years of this. Two if she can find a proper cook.

Claire comes to school early. She comes to see the boys fight for her.

Peter sits at the back of the class every year. He always has and she suspects he always will. Strategically speaking, his harelip would be less noticeable were he to sit in the front row where only the teacher and the student to his right could see it. But Peter hasn’t thought it through, or maybe he thought it through very thoroughly and realized he would still feel he was on display up at the front. So he sits in the back, and while he may get more stares in this way he can at least know he’s done nothing to invite them. Claire would hate to look the way he does. She’s always been pretty, just as her mother was always pretty, and they have discussed—in hushed, secret tones, when nobody could possibly hear their prideful confessions—the horror and the tragedy of life as an Ugly Person. “Everyone is beautiful inside,” said her mother, “but most people don’t take the time or the trouble to find out. I would hate to be the sort of person you had to know to love.” No one ever needed to know Claire’s mother to love her.

Matthew sits beside Peter and every morning he brings him a treat. Sometimes a cookie, sometimes a pastry, sometimes a chocolate from the factory. He also looks at Peter often, pointedly, as if to say, “I don’t mind your disfigurement at all.” By way of these two strategies he’s forced Peter to treat him as a friend. The harelipped boy does not have the luxury of casually refusing kindness, no matter how contrived. His cheeks burn at every gift and he glares when little Matthew gazes, but there’s nothing he can do about it. They are rapidly becoming best chums by the sheer force of Matthew’s will. He passes notes in class—poorly scrawled, half-literate French, as Peter has shown her later. He has come to the harelipped boy’s defense in one fight already, though he was neither needed nor wanted. He’s drawn them together, on the same page, at arm’s length, but smiling. The harelip did not translate to the stick figure. You could tell he was Peter because he was a little taller.

It’s a strange way to woo a girl if that’s what Matthew means by it. He has yet to speak to her except through the effects of his actions on Peter. Holding eye contact with Claire as he links his arm with the other boy’s, glancing to see if she’s glancing while Peter eats his treat. Smiling like a proud pup when he thinks he’s done good. There is always the pause as he removes the latest pastry or cookie from his bag—Peter now watching, expectant—where he seems to consider giving it to her instead. She wouldn’t accept it. She couldn’t.

She might, if he guessed her favorite flavor.

Peter wipes his mouth, having finished a slice of chocolate cake. He licks his bottom lip. “Do you always have to watch me eat it?” he says. “It makes me feel all faggoty.”

Matthew smiles, says, “I’m sorry.” This is roughly one fifth of his French vocabulary. He collects the chocolate-smeared wax paper from Peter’s desk, folds it into quarters, drops it into a paper bag, puts this paper bag inside his own bag. He unloads his school books, stacking them one by one on the desk. They look undisturbed—unused, even. Like many of the students here, Matthew has a job that keeps him busy after school, but Claire can’t imagine what would keep him from trying even a smidgen. He should learn the language , at least.

“Hey,” says Peter, glancing at Claire. “You know what we should do?”

“What?” says Matthew, in English. It’s not clear if he’s responding or merely asking what Peter means. What is sometimes his way of begging to hear it all again in English, a request the other students could sometimes honor but rarely choose to.

“We should arm-wrestle,” says Peter. “Then we could finally know who is stronger.”

They already know who’s stronger. They’ve known it from the beginning, when Peter knocked Matthew off his bike. They’ve known it in the weeks since school began, for instance when Peter hoisted a bigger rock over his head in the rock-hoisting contest, and they knew it when Peter lifted Matthew and carried him on his back, and they knew it when Peter won their friendly boxing match by bloodying Matthew’s friendly little nose, which took on a slight, permanent slant in the healing, its tip hooked just a little upward. Still, Peter scoots his desk up next to Matthew’s, swivels so they’re almost facing, and pulls Matthew’s desk the rest of the way, their desks kissing. Claire pictures the boys themselves kissing and the thought is not disagreeable. Peter offers his hand, curled to half fist, elbow resting on his desk. Matthew looks to Claire for help. She’d rather see them fight.

Matthew takes Peter’s hand. They each grip the opposite edges of their desks with their free hands, the sort of rule-breaking that suggests seriousness in much starker terms than mere passionless rule-following. Their pencil necks are already tensing in preparation, veins standing out like tripwires. Peter counts down from three. They push. They make grunts of frustration. Little Matthew is immediately at a disadvantage, pushed down several inches, but he holds it steady there a moment, cheeks going all red. Children filter into the room, some minding the competition in the back, others sensibly ignoring the rivalry, which will find another iteration tomorrow, and another the next day.

Claire opens her grammar and pretends to consult it. Insofar as Matthew has a chance in these contests, it’s because he doesn’t understand the goal is victory with dignity—without the skin inflaming, without the pores drooling, without depraved breathing, without losing one’s cool. How he strained to lift that rock. How he flailed when Peter boxed him, at one point actually shoving a finger—by accident, she hoped—two knuckles deep in the other boy’s nose, coming back with snot and blood. Now Matthew twists at the wrist, pulls the desk to stay steady, plants his feet wide. Does everything short of stand up and jump. Claire twists her hair around her finger and lets the coil hang.

Peter pushes Matthew’s hand another increment. The strain is only visible in his neck. He doesn’t huff or puff. He doesn’t sweat. Doesn’t crimson. Doesn’t need to. He looks like he’s waiting for something.

Matthew’s hand is pressed lower, his arm nearly touching the desk, the hand itself hovering several inches past the little square of plywood. He groans, pulls his head in the opposite direction, drips, shuffles his feet, leaning with his whole body. All the other children have sat down in their seats. Most have pretended to forget the arm-wrestling entirely, perhaps because they are embarrassed for the combatants. Claire is deeply embarrassed. This is for her. Her gut’s electric. The harelipped boy seems to leer. He always seems to leer. It may be real now, though—the corner of his mouth genuinely raised, the glinting teeth set hard.

Matthew’s desk begins to rattle. The seat’s hooves lift from the ground and clatter back, three always touching, but four never. Peter hisses from apparent pain. Matthew growls. He loses. His arm falls to the desk, his hand wrenched back at a ninety-degree angle from the wrist, something like elbow macaroni. He coughs like he’s been socked in the gut. A strand of spit hangs from his lip.

“Good match,” says Peter. He peels Matthew’s good hand from the desk’s edge and shakes it once, then scoots his own back into place. Just in time: the teacher has entered. He writes on the chalkboard. The children are to copy what he writes. Peter writes it all down. Matthew, still smarting, massages his wrist and looks at Claire as if it were her fault, as he always does when the contests are over. His face is twisted by resentment. His bottom lip envelops its better, revealing the stupid narrow knot of muscle in his chin, tugging the skin of his neck upward and partly onto his face, where it puffs and swells. He is like a wounded frog.