Bridge of Clay(69)

Up top, Darby Munro, the jockey, seemed to be watching the car as well, and Henry turned the key. When the engine ran, the wipers clocked over maybe every four seconds, and horse and rider, they cleared and obscured, cleared and obscured, till Henry finally spoke.

    “Hey, Clay,” he said, and shook his head, and smiled just slight and slightedly. “Tell me what he’s like these days.”





In later years, it was understandable.

People got it wrong.

They thought it was Penny’s death and our father leaving that made us what we were—and sure, it definitely made us rowdier and harder and hardier, and gave us a sense of fight—but it isn’t what made us tough. No, in the beginning it was something more.

It was the wooden, the upright.

The piano.



* * *



—

As it was, it started with me, in sixth grade, and now, as I type, I’m guilty; I apologize. This, after all, is Clay’s story, and now I write for myself—but it somehow feels important. It leads us somewhere else.

At school till then it was easy. Class was fine, I was in on every football game. I’d barely had an argument, till someone cared to notice: I was ribbed for learning the piano.

Never mind that we were forced to, or that the piano, as an instrument, had a long history of rebellion—Ray Charles was coolness personified; Jerry Lee Lewis set the thing on fire. As a kid growing up in the racing quarter, only one type of boy played the piano; it didn’t matter how much the world had advanced. It didn’t matter if you were the school football captain or a juvenile amateur boxer—the piano made you one thing, and that thing, of course, was this: You were clearly a homosexual.



* * *



—

    It had actually been known for years that we’d learned, even if we weren’t much good. None of that really mattered, though, given that childhoods latch on to things at different times. You can be left alone for a decade, only to be hung out to dry in your teens. You could collect stamps and have it labeled interesting in first grade, and have it haunt you in ninth.

For me, as I said, it was sixth grade.

All it took was a kid a few inches shorter, but a lot more powerful, who actually was a juvenile boxer—a kid named Jimmy Hartnell. His father, Jimmy Hartnell Sr., owned the Tri-Colors Boxing Gym, over on Poseidon Road.

And Jimmy, what a kid.

He was built like a very small supermarket: Compact; expensive if you crossed him.

His hair was a ginger fringe.

In terms of how it started, there were boys and girls in the corridor, and angles of dust and sun. There were uniforms and callings-out, and countless moving bodies. It was beautiful in that off-putting way, how the light came streaking in; those perfect, long-lit beams.

Jimmy Hartnell strode the hallway, freckly, confident, toward me. White-shirted, grey-shorted. The look he wore was pleased. He was perfect schoolish thuggery; his smell the smell of breakfast, his arms all blood and meat.

“Hey,” he said, “isn’t that that Dunbar kid? The one who plays the piano?” He rolled a shoulder, givingly, into me. “What a fucking poofter!”

That kid was made for italics.



* * *



—

It went on like that for weeks, maybe a month, and always a little bit further. The shoulder became an elbow, the elbow a punch in the balls (although not nearly as lethal as old Bread Rolls), which soon became standard favorites—nipple cripples in the boys’ toilets, here and there a headlock; choker holds in the hall.

In so many ways, looking back, it was just the spoils of childhood, to be twisted and rightfully ruled. It’s not unlike that dust in the sun, being tumbled through the room.

    But that didn’t mean I enjoyed it.

Or even more, that I wouldn’t react.

For me, like so many in that situation, I didn’t face the problem directly, or at least I didn’t yet. No, that would have been pure stupidity, so I fought back where I could.

In short I blamed Penelope.

I railed against the piano.



* * *



—

Of course, there are problems and there are problems, and my problem now was this: Next to Penelope, Jimmy Hartnell was a Goddamn softy.

Even if she could never quite tame us at the piano, she always made us practice. She clung to an edge of Europe, or a city, at least, in the East. By then there was even a mantra she had (and by God we had it too): “You can quit if you want by high school.”

But that didn’t help me now.

We were halfway through first term, which meant most of the year to survive.



* * *



—

My attempts had started lamely:

Going to the toilet midpractice.

Arriving late.

Playing poorly on purpose.

Soon I was outright defying her; not playing certain pieces, and then not playing at all. She had all the patience in the world for those troubled and troublesome Hyperno kids, but they hadn’t prepared her for this.

At first she tried talking to me; she’d say, “What’s gotten into you lately?” and “Come on, Matthew, you’re better than that.”

Of course I told her nothing.