Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

John Williams was in the school, but except for brief glimpses in the hall I never saw him. Teachers would repeat the things he had said in their other classes. They read from his papers. In the gym the coach described plays he had made, set shots he had taken. Everyone talked about him, and girls made a reference to him a sort of love signal. If it was suggested that he had smiled at one of them, the girl referred to would blush or, what was worse, look aloofly mysterious. ( Then I could have punished her, then I could.) Gradually his name began to appear on all their notebooks, in the margins of their texts. (It annoyed me to remember what I had done on the wall.) The big canvas books, with their careful, elaborate J’s and W’s, took on the appearance of ancient, illuminated fables. It was the unconscious embroidery of love, hope’s bright doodle. Even the administration was aware of him. In Assembly the principal announced that John Williams had broken all existing records in the school’s charity drives. She had never seen good citizenship like his before, she said.

It’s one thing to live with a bully, another to live with a hero.

Everyone’s hatred I understand, no one’s love; everyone’s grievance, no one’s content.

I saw Mimmer. Mimmer should have graduated years ago. I saw Mimmer the dummy.

“Mimmer,” I said, “you’re in his class.”

“He’s very smart.”

“Yes, but is it fair? You work harder. I’ve seen you study. You spend hours. Nothing comes. He was born knowing. You could have used just a little of what he’s got so much of. It’s not fair.”

“He’s very clever. It’s wonderful,” Mimmer says.

Slud is crippled. He wears a shoe with a built-up heel to balance himself.

“Ah, Slud,” I say, “I’ve seen him run.”

“He has beaten the horses in the park. It’s very beautiful,” Slud says.

“He’s handsome, isn’t he, Clob?” Clob looks contagious, radioactive. He has severe acne. He is ugly under his acne.

“He gets the girls,” Clob says.

He gets everything , I think. But I’m alone in my envy, awash in my lust. It’s as if I were a prophet to the deaf. Schnooks, schnooks, I want to scream, dopes and settlers. What good does his smile do you, of what use is his good heart?

The other day I did something stupid. I went to the cafeteria and shoved a boy out of the way and took his place in the line. It was foolish, but their fear is almost all gone and I felt I had to show the flag. The boy only grinned and let me pass. Then someone called my name. It was him . I turned to face him. “Push,” he said, “you forgot your silver.” He handed it to a girl in front of him and she gave it to the boy in front of her and it came to me down the long line.

I plot, I scheme. Snares, I think; tricks and traps. I remember the old days when there were ways to snap fingers, crush toes, ways to pull noses, twist heads and punch arms — the old-timey Flinch Law I used to impose, the gone bully magic of deceit. But nothing works against him, I think. How does he know so much? He is bully-prepared, that one, not to be trusted.

It is worse and worse.

In the cafeteria he eats with Frank. “You don’t want those potatoes,” he tells him. “Not the ice cream, Frank. One sandwich, remember. You lost three pounds last week.” The fat boy smiles his fat love at him. John Williams puts his arm around him. He seems to squeeze him thin.

He’s helping Mimmer to study. He goes over his lessons and teaches him tricks, short cuts. “I want you up there with me on the Honor Roll, Mimmer.”

I see him with Slud the cripple. They go to the gym. I watch from the balcony. “Let’s develop those arms, my friend.” They work out with weights. Slud’s muscles grow, they bloom from his bones.

I lean over the rail. I shout down, “He can bend iron bars. Can he peddle a bike? Can he walk on rough ground? Can he climb up a hill? Can he wait on a line? Can he dance with a girl? Can he go up a ladder or jump from a chair?”

Beneath me the rapt Slud sits on a bench and raises a weight. He holds it at arm’s length, level with his chest. He moves it high, higher. It rises above his shoulders, his throat, his head. He bends back his neck to see what he’s done. If the weight should fall now it would crush his throat. I stare down into his smile.

I see Eugene in the halls. I stop him. “Eugene, what’s he done for you?” I ask. He smiles — he never did this — and I see his mouth’s flood. “High tide,” I say with satisfaction.

Williams has introduced Clob to a girl. They have double-dated.

A week ago John Williams came to my house to see me! I wouldn’t let him in.

“Please open the door, Push. I’d like to chat with you. Will you open the door? Push? I think we ought to talk. I think I can help you to be happier.”

I was furious. I didn’t know what to say to him. “I don’t want to be happier. Go way.” It was what little kids used to say to me.

“ Please let me help you.”

“ Please let me—” I begin to echo. “Please let me alone.”

“We ought to be friends, Push.”

“No deals.” I am choking, I am close to tears. What can I do? What? I want to kill him.

I double-lock the door and retreat to my room. He is still out there. I have tried to live my life so that I could keep always the lamb from my door.

He has gone too far this time; and I think sadly, I will have to fight him, I will have to fight him. Push pushed. I think sadly of the pain. Push pushed. I will have to fight him. Not to preserve honor but its opposite. Each time I see him I will have to fight him. And then I think— of course! And I smile. He has done me a favor. I know it at once. If he fights me he fails. He fails if he fights me. Push pushed pushes! It’s physics! Natural law! I know he’ll beat me, but I won’t prepare, I won’t train, I won’t use the tricks I know. It’s strength against strength, and my strength is as the strength of ten because my jaw is glass! He doesn’t know everything, not everything he doesn’t . And I think, I could go out now, he’s still there, I could hit him in the hall, but I think, No, I want them to see, I want them to see!

The next day I am very excited. I look for Williams. He’s not in the halls. I miss him in the cafeteria. Afterward I look for him in the schoolyard where I first saw him. (He has them organized now. He teaches them games of Tibet, games of Japan; he gets them to play lost sports of the dead.) He does not disappoint me. He is there in the yard, a circle around him, a ring of the loyal.

I join the ring. I shove in between two kids I have known. They try to change places; they murmur and fret.

Williams sees me and waves. His smile could grow flowers. “Boys,” he says, “boys, make room for Push. Join hands, boys.” They welcome me to the circle. One takes my hand, then another. I give to each calmly.

I wait. He doesn’t know everything .

“Boys,” he begins, “today we’re going to learn a game that the knights of the lords and kings of old France used to play in another century. Now you may not realize it, boys, because today when we think of a knight we think, too, of his fine charger, but the fact is that a horse was a rare animal — not a domestic European animal at all, but Asian. In western Europe, for example, there was no such thing as a work horse until the eighth century. Your horse was just too expensive to be put to heavy labor in the fields. (This explains, incidentally, the prevalence of famine in western Europe, whereas famine is unrecorded in Asia until the ninth century, when Euro-Asian horse trading was at its height.) It wasn’t only expensive to purchase a horse, it was expensive to keep one. A cheap fodder wasn’t developed in Europe until the tenth century. Then, of course, when you consider the terrific risks that the warrior horse of a knight naturally had to run, you begin to appreciate how expensive it would have been for the lord — unless he was extremely rich — to provide all his knights with horses. He’d want to make pretty certain that the knights who got them knew how to handle a horse. (Only your knights errant — an elite, crack corps — ever had horses. We don’t realize that most knights were home knights; chevalier chez they were called.)