Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [41]
“Tommy, come on.” I stepped forward and he whirled around, his fist at his shoulder. “Shut up, Dubis, or you’re fuckin’ next.” He punched Jeb again, his head knocking back, his hair falling in front of his face. Tommy J. was yelling something about his sister, about Jeb being dead if he even looked at her again. Jeb’s eyes were welling up and there was blood in his mouth and my feet were bolted to concrete, my arms just tubes of air, my heart pounding somewhere high over my head as my sick mother came running out of the house and down the stairs. She grabbed the fallen branch off the ground and started swinging it in front of her. “Get out of here or I’ll call the cops! Get!”
Tommy J. turned and raised his forearm, her swinging stick just missing it. “Fuck you, you fuckin’ whore.” He began walking backwards, pointing his finger at Jeb. “You heard what I said. You fuckin’ heard me.” His eyes passed over me as he turned and started walking back to Main and the avenues, the others falling in with him, and it was the same look Cody Perkins had given me as he pedaled right by me on my stolen bicycle, as if no one sat or stood where he was looking, nobody at all.
IN MINUTES the street was quiet and empty again. Jeb’s teacher and my mother had walked him into the house, and I stood there on the sidewalk where Tommy J. had beaten up my brother and called my mother a whore.
And what had I done?
I’d pleaded with him. I’d called him Tommy and pleaded.
I stood there a long time. If there were sounds, I didn’t hear them. If there was something to see, I didn’t see it. There was the non-feeling that I had no body, that I had no name, no past and no future, that I simply was not. I was not here.
Then I was walking. Up the stairs and into the house. Through the dark foyer and into the dining room we never used. Across the back hallway and its curled linoleum into the downstairs bathroom where I shut the door behind me, though I could not be sure of that, the me. Was there a me?
I stood in front of the sink and the mirror. I was almost surprised to see someone standing there. This kid with a smooth face and not one whisker, this kid with long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, this kid with narrow shoulders and soft arm and chest muscles and no balls. This kid had no balls. I looked into his eyes: I don’t care if you get your face beat in, I don’t care if you get kicked in the head or stabbed or even shot, I will never allow you not to fight back ever again. You hear me?
Ever. Not once, ever, again.
I left the bathroom and walked through the kitchen where my mother and Jeb’s teacher were tending to him at the sink. They didn’t look at me, and I couldn’t look at them.
I ran up the back stairs and closed the door to my room. I got down on my hands and knees, straightened my back and legs, lowered my chest to the floor, and pushed back up. I did this as many times as I could, the dusty rug rising to my face, Jeb’s head snapping back, his hair flying.
I may have done seven or eight push-ups. I turned over on my back and began doing sit-ups. My stomach muscles burned right away. I hooked my hands behind my head and jerked myself up for two or three more. I was sweating and breathing hard. Then I remembered the weight set in the basement.
When I was twelve and we were still living in the old doctor’s office, I’d asked for it for my birthday. It seemed expensive, and I was surprised I’d gotten it, but I’d set up the bench at the foot of the bed. There was an instructional sheet of exercises for the whole body and I’d taped that to the wall and tried doing the exercises for half an hour two or three days a week. I didn’t know if this was how Billy Jack had gotten started or not, but it seemed like the right place to begin except that exercises were uncomfortable and a little painful, and I wasn’t sure I was doing them right anyway, and it was so much easier to stay on the floor in front of the TV.
Now, two years later, I rushed down the back stairs and through