Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

I’m Push the bully, and what I hate are new kids and sissies, dumb kids and smart, rich kids, poor kids, kids who wear glasses, talk funny, show off, patrol boys and wise guys and kids who pass pencils and water the plants — and cripples, especially cripples. I love nobody loved.

One time I was pushing this red-haired kid (I’m a pusher, no hitter, no belter; an aggressor of marginal violence, I hate real force) and his mother stuck her head out the window and shouted something I’ve never forgotten. “ Push ,” she yelled. “ You, Push . You pick on him because you wish you had his red hair!” It’s true; I did wish I had his red hair. I wish I were tall, or fat, or thin. I wish I had different eyes, different hands, a mother in the supermarket. I wish I were a man, a small boy, a girl in the choir. I’m a coveter, a Boston Blackie of the heart, casing the world. Endlessly I covet and case. (Do you know what makes me cry? The Declaration of Independence. “All men are created equal.” That’s beautiful.)

If you’re a bully like me, you use your head. Toughness isn’t enough. You beat them up, they report you. Then where are you? I’m not even particularly strong. (I used to be strong. I used to do exercise, work out, but strength implicates you, and often isn’t an advantage anyway — read the judo ads. Besides, your big bullies aren’t bullies at all — they’re athletes . With them, beating guys up is a sport.) But what I lose in size and strength I make up in courage. I’m very brave. That’s a lie about bullies being cowards underneath. If you’re a coward, get out of the business.

I’m best at torment.

A kid has a toy bow, toy arrows. “Let Push look,” I tell him.

He’s suspicious, he knows me. “Go way, Push,” he says, this mama-warned Push doubter.

“Come on,” I say, “come on.”

“No, Push. I can’t. My mother said I can’t.”

I raise my arms, I spread them. I’m a bird — slow, powerful, easy, free. I move my head offering profile like something beaked. I’m the Thunderbird. “In the school where I go I have a teacher who teaches me magic,” I say. “Arnold Salamancy, give Push your arrows. Give him one, he gives back two. Push is the God of the Neighborhood.”

“Go way, Push,” the kid says, uncertain.

“Right,” Push says, himself again. “Right. I’ll disappear. First the fingers.” My fingers ball to fists. “My forearms next.” They jackknife into my upper arms. “The arms.” Quick as bird-blink they snap behind my back, fit between the shoulder blades like a small knapsack. (I am double-jointed, protean.) “My head,” I say.

“No, Push,” the kid says, terrified. I shudder and everything comes back, falls into place from the stem of self like a shaken puppet.

“The arrow, the arrow. Two where was one.” He hands me an arrow.

“ Trouble, trouble, double rubble! ” I snap it and give back the pieces.

Well, sure. There is no magic. If there were I would learn it. I would find out the words, the slow turns and strange passes, drain the bloods and get the herbs, do the fires like a vestal. I would look for the main chants. Then I’d change things. Push would!

But there’s only casuistical trick. Sleight-of-mouth, the bully’s poetics.

You know the formulas:

“Did you ever see a match burn twice?” you ask. Strike. Extinguish. Jab his flesh with the hot stub.

“Play ‘Gestapo’?”

“How do you play?”

“What’s your name?”

“It’s Morton.”

I slap him. “You’re lying.”

“Adam and Eve and Pinch Me Hard went down to the lake for a swim. Adam and Eve fell in. Who was left?”

“Pinch Me Hard.”

I do.

Physical puns, conundrums. Push the punisher, the conundrummer!

But there has to be more than tricks in a bag of tricks.

I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I think I’m the only new kid. In a room, the school, the playground, the neighborhood, I get the feeling I’ve just moved in, no one knows me. You know what I like? To stand in crowds. To wait with them at the airport to meet a plane. Someone asks what time it is. I’m the first to answer. Or at the ball park when the vendor comes. He passes the hot dog down the long row. I want my hands on it, too. On the dollar going up, the change coming down.

I am ingenious, I am patient.

A kid is going downtown on the elevated train. He’s got his little suit on, his shoes are shined, he wears a cap. This is a kid going to the travel bureaus, the foreign tourist offices to get brochures, maps, pictures of the mountains for a unit at his school — a kid looking for extra credit. I follow him. He comes out of the Italian Tourist Information Center. His arms are full. I move from my place at the window. I follow for two blocks and bump into him as he steps from a curb. It’s a collision —The pamphlets fall from his arms. Pretending confusion, I walk on his paper Florence. I grind my heel in his Riviera. I climb Vesuvius and sack his Rome and dance on the Isle of Capri.

The Industrial Museum is a good place to find children. I cut somebody’s five- or six-year-old kid brother out of the herd of eleven-and twelve-year-olds he’s come with. “ Quick, ” I say. I pull him along the corridors, up the stairs, through the halls, down to a mezzanine landing. Breathless, I pause for a minute. “I’ve got some gum. Do you want a stick?” He nods; I stick him. I rush him into an auditorium and abandon him. He’ll be lost for hours.

I sidle up to a kid at the movies. “You smacked my brother,” I tell him. “After the show — I’ll be outside.”

I break up games. I hold the ball above my head. “You want it? Take it.”

I go into barber shops. There’s a kid waiting. “I’m next,” I tell him, “understand?”

One day Eugene Kraft rang my bell. Eugene is afraid of me, so he helps me. He’s fifteen and there’s something wrong with his saliva glands and he drools. His chin is always chapped. I tell him he has to drink a lot because he loses so much water.

“Push? Push,” he says. He’s wiping his chin with his tissues. “Push, there’s this kid—”

“Better get a glass of water, Eugene.”

“No, Push, no fooling, there’s this new kid — he just moved in. You’ve got to see this kid.”

“Eugene, get some water, please. You’re drying up. I’ve never seen you so bad. There are deserts in you, Eugene.”

“All right, Push, but then you’ve got to see—”

“Swallow, Eugene. You better swallow.”

He gulps hard.

“Push, this is a kid and a half. Wait, you’ll see.”

“I’m very concerned about you, Eugene. You’re dying of thirst, Eugene. Come into the kitchen with me.”

I push him through the door. He’s very excited. I’ve never seen him so excited. He talks at me over his shoulder, his mouth flooding, his teeth like the little stone pebbles at the bottom of a fishbowl. “He’s got this sport coat, with a patch over the heart. Like a king, Push. No kidding.”

“Be careful of the carpet, Eugene.”

I turn on the taps in the sink. I mix in hot water. “Use your tissues, Eugene. Wipe your chin.”

He wipes himself and puts the Kleenex in his pocket. All of Eugene’s pockets bulge. He looks, with his bulging pockets, like a clumsy smuggler.

“Wipe, Eugene. Swallow, you’re drowning.”

“He’s got this funny accent — you could die.” Excited, he tamps at his mouth like a diner, a tubercular.

“Drink some water, Eugene.”

“No, Push. I’m not thirsty — really.”

“Don’t be foolish, kid. That’s because your mouth’s so wet. Inside where it counts you’re drying up. It stands to reason. Drink some water.”