In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [43]
The Tasmanian Devil is well named, being a nocturnal marsupial of extraordinary ferocity, being strictly carnivorous, and when cornered fighting with a nuttiness beyond all bounds of reason. In fact, it is said that he is one of the few creatures on earth that looks forward to being cornered.
I looked him in the eye; he looked back, and even from the flat, glossy surface of the paper I could feel his burning rage, a Primal rage that glowed white hot like the core of a nuclear explosion. A chord of understanding was struck between us. He knew and I knew. We were Killers. The only thing that separated us was the sham. He admitted it, and I have been attempting to cover it up all of my life.
I remember well the first time my own Tasmanian Devil without warning screamed out of the darkness and revealed himself for what he was—a fanged, maniacal meat eater. Every male child sweats inside at a word that is rarely heard today: the Bully. That is not to say that bullies no longer exist. Sociologists have given them other and softer-sounding labels, an “over-aggressive child,” for example, but they all amount to the same thing—Meatheads. Guys who grow up banging grilles in parking lots and becoming captains of Industry or Mafia hatchet men. Every school had at least five, and they usually gathered followers and toadies like barnacles on the bottom of a garbage scow. The lines were clearly drawn. You were either a Bully, a Toady, or one of the nameless rabble of Victims who hid behind hedges, continually ran up alleys, ducked under porches, and tried to get a connection with City Hall, City Hall being the Bully himself.
I was an accomplished Alley Runner who did not wear sneakers to school from choice but to get off the mark quicker. I was well qualified to endorse Keds Champions with:
“I have outrun some of the biggest Bullies of my time wearing Keds, and I am still here to tell the tale.”
It would make a great ad in Boys’ Life:
“KIDS! When that cold sweat pours down your back and you are facing the Moment Of Truth on the way home from the store, don’t you wish you had bought Keds? Yes, our new Bully-Beater model has been endorsed by skinny kids with glasses from coast to coast. That extra six feet may mean the difference between making the porch and you-know-what!”
Many of us have grown up wearing mental Keds and still ducking behind filing cabinets, water coolers, and into convenient men’s rooms when that cold sweat trickles down between the shoulder blades. My Moment of Truth was a kid named Grover Dill.
What a rotten name! Dill was a Running Nose type of Bully. His nose was always running, even when it wasn’t. He was a yelling, wiry, malevolent, sneevily snively Bully who had quelled all insurgents for miles around. I did not know one kid who was not afraid of Dill, mainly because Dill was truly aggressive. This kind of aggression later in life is often called “Talent” or “Drive,” but to the great formless herd of kids it just meant a lot of running, getting belted, and continually feeling ashamed.
If Dill so much as said “Hi” to you, you felt great and warm inside. But mostly he just hit you in the mouth. Now a true Bully is not a flash in the pan, and Dill wasn’t. This went on for years. I must have been in about second grade when Dill first belted me behind the ear.
Maybe the terrain had something to do with it. Life is very basic in Northern Indiana. Life is more Primal there than in, say, New York City or New Jersey or California. First of all, Winters are really Winters there. Snow, ice, hard rocky frozen ground that doesn’t thaw out until late June. Kids played baseball all Winter on this frozen lumpy tundra. Ground balls come galloping: “K-tunk K-tunk K-tunk K-tunk” over the Arctic concrete. And then summer would come. The ground would thaw and the wind would start, whistling in off the Lake, a hot Sahara gale. I lived the first ten years of my life in a continual sandstorm. A sandstorm in the Dunes region, with the temperature at 105 and no rain since the first of June, produces