THE PARABLE OF THE STICK

Leonard looked up from the newspaper he was reading, a little rag that was all that was left of our town paper, the bulk of it now being online, and glanced at me.

"So I'm reading in the paper here about how the high school, hell, grade school, all the grades, they got a no-fighting policy, no matter who starts it. Some guy jumps you on the playground, lunch break, or some such, and you whack him in the nose so he'll leave you alone, you both go to detention."

"Can't have kids fighting. You and me, we fought too much. Maybe it's not a good thing to learn, all that fighting. We met at a fight, remember?"

"Horseshit," Leonard said, and put the paper down. "Look here, Hap, I know a thing about you, and I know how it was for me at school, with integration and all, and I don't think it works like that, and shouldn't. This whole thing about fighting to protect yourself, and getting the same punishment as the one who picks on you, how's that teaching common sense?"

"How's it work, Leonard?"

"Think on it. There's this thing I know about you, let's call it the parable of the stick."

I knew exactly what he was talking about.

I said, "Okay, let's call it that."

"You moved here from a smaller school, and I know you had some problems. We've talked about it. I wasn't there, but I know the drill. Try being black in a formerly all-white school sometime."

"I could try being black," I said, "but I'd still be white."

"You came to school from some little town, to Marvel Creek. And there was this bully, a real asshole, bigger than you, and you were small then, right?"

"Not that I'm a behemoth now."

"No, you lack my manly physique, but you've grown into something solid. Then, though, you were a skinny little kid with hay fever and a plan to do something with your life. Which, of course, you failed to do. What were you going to be, by the way?"

"I don't know. A writer I thought."

"Ah, that's right. Hell, I knew that. It's been so long since you mentioned it, I forgot. Yeah, a writer. So you move here, a poor country kid with shabby clothes and his nose in a book, and this guy, this big kid, he picks on you. He does it everyday. Calls you book worm or some such, maybe pencil dick. So what do you do? You do the right thing. You go to the principal and tell him the kid's fucking with you, and the principal says, okay, and he pulls the mean kid in and talks to him. So what's the mean little shit do the very next day?"

"Double beats the shit out of me."

"There you have it, but you're not fighting back, right?"

"Oh, I fought back. I just wasn't any good at it then. Probably why I learned martial arts."

"Sure it is. I did the same thing. I wasn't so little and didn't lose too much, but I was a black kid in a formerly all white school, and then there was my extraordinary beauty they were jealous of."

"Don't forget the massive dick."

"Oh yeah, the black anaconda that knows no friends. So this happens a few days in a row, this mean kid ignoring the principal, him not giving a greased dog turd what the principal said. You go home, and your dad, he sees you got a black eye and busted lip, and what does he do?"

"He tells me if he's bigger than me, bring him down to size."

"Right. He says, 'Hap, go out there and get yourself a good stick, cause there's plenty of them lying around on the edge of the playground by the woods. You get that big stick, and you lay for him, and when he don't expect it none, you bring that sick down on him so hard it will cause you to come up off the ground. Don't put his eye out with it, and don't hit him in the head, unless you have to, but use that stick with all your force, and if something breaks on him, well, it breaks. You get a licking every day and you don't do something back, taking that licking and being licked is gonna turn into a lifetime business.' He told you that, right?"

"Right."

"And you got you a stick next day at playground break, laid it up by the edge of the concrete wall on one side of the steps that led out of the school, and when the bell rang for the day to end, you got out there as quick as you could, ahead of the mean kid, and you picked up that stick."

"I did at that."

"And waited."

"Like a fucking hawk watching for a rat."

"Down the stairs he came, and you —"

"Swung that stick," I said. "Jesus. To this day I can still hear that fucking stick whistling in the wind, and I can still hear the way it met his leg just above the knee, right as he came down the last step. I remember even better that shit-eating, asshole-sucking grin he had on his face as he came down and saw me, before he realized about the stick. And better than that, I remember the way his face changed when he saw I had that stick. But it was too late for that motherfucker."

"What I'm saying."

"I caught him as he put his weight on his left leg. Smack of that stick on his hide was like a choir of angels had let out with one clean note, and down he went, right on his face."

"And when he started to get up?"

"I brought that stick down on his goddamn back with all I had in the tank, and oh my god, did that feel good. Then I couldn't stop, Leonard. I swear I couldn't."

"Tell it, brother. Tell it like it was. I never get tired of it."

"I started crying and swinging that stick, and I just couldn't fucking stop. Finally a teacher, a coach I think, he came out and got me and pulled me off that bastard, and that bastard was bawling like a baby and screaming, 'Don't hit me no more. Please don't hit me no more.'"

"I actually started to feel bad about it, sorry for him —"

"As you always do," Leonard said.

"— and they carried me to the principal's office, and they brought the asshole in with me, and they put us in chairs beside one another, where we both sat crying, me mostly with happiness, and him because I had just beaten the living hell out of him with a stick and he had a fucking limp. He hurt so bad he could hardly walk."

"What did the principal do?"

"You know what he did."

"Yeah, but now that you're worked up and starting to sweat, let's not spoil it by you not getting it all out, cause I can tell right now, for you, the whole thing is as raw as if it happened yesterday."

"It is. The principal said, 'Hap, did you hit him with a stick?' and I say to him, 'Hard as I could.' The principal looks at the mean kid, says, 'And what did you do?' 'I didn't do nothing,' he says. 'No,' the principal said, 'what did you do the day before, and the day before that, and what were you told?' And the kid said, 'I was told to leave Hap alone.'"

"And what did the principal say?" Leonard said. "Keep on telling it."

"You're nuts, Leonard. You know what he said."

"Like I said, I never tire of hearing this one."

"He said to the kid, 'But you went back and did it again anyway, didn't you? You went back and...