Back vs. Tack

One short section of the quarterback’s arm was exposed: the jersey covered the upper arm to within a few inches of the elbow, and just below the elbow, the forearm was covered by a brace to the wrist.

“You’re arm looks strong, but I am stronger,” scoffed the beefy left tackle. “Look at my hands. They can tear your arm apart.”

The hulking lineman showed the quarterback his huge, violent hands, throbbing with unbelievable strength.

“You’re full of shit and bluster,” the quarterback rejoined. “You could never match my arm. Just try.”

The quarterback stiffened his arm along its entire length as the tackle, smacking his hands on his breeches and flexing his fingers, screwed up his face into a horrible, grinding grimace.
Seizing the quarterback’s upper arm with the left hand, and the forearm with the right, so that he could lock his thumbs for added torque, the tackle groaned and winced and gnashed his teeth as he twisted and strained. The quarterback trembled to maintain his rigidity.

Suddenly, with a loud snap, the elbow gave way, and the lineman tore away the quarterback’s lower arm and hand, sending both men reeling to the ground.

“I told you I could tear your arm off,” the tackle wheezed. “These——these hands of mine——they are——invincible!”

“Damn your eyes, by gosh, you’re right!” the quarterback cried. “But you tried my weak, right arm. My left is much stronger. That’s my passing arm. You couldn’t have done a thing with it.”

“Could.”

“Couldn’t”

“Dare you.”

“Ha!”

Again the tackle lunged, grabbed, twisted, puffed, strained, even plunged both cleated feet into the back’s gut for leverage. He gnashed his teeth to granules inside his mouth and nearly strangled himself on their dust, yet the quarterback’s strong left arm withstood every assault.
He flapped the stump of his right arm against his ribs non­chalantly, waiting for the tackle to concede defeat.

“Oof! I quit.” the tackle collapsed on the turf. “Your left arm is more than a match for these——these hands.”

The quarterback merely shrugged, as the lineman sat on his ass in disbelief, regarding his throbbing, scarred, impotent hands.

“Better luck next time, anyway,” said the quarterback. “I told you my left arm is strong, but you wouldn’t listen. Now you see what it’s all come to. It cost me my right arm to teach you a lesson, but if you’re truly cured of your emptv bragging, I count it a small once to pay. Go ye forth and brag no more.”

The Long Walk Home

I can’t remember when I started home from Jim’s that late October night, but I told myself I wouldn’t be scared even though the single, high incandescent streetlight swayed wildly in the wind, throwing eerie shadows through the tall buckeye branches to the glazed brick sidewalk below. After all, I was ten now.

I stared as I passed the white frame house across the intersection where some older girls stayed and remembered all the men Jim and I had watched going in and out of it from his front porch in the deep shadows of the summer evenings. And then I spied the old widow Moss’s next door to it, and peered into the shade of her porch where she would come out to swing slowly and walk around the front with a lady I didn’t know.

Then I saw the dusky brown house next door that was always vacant, with a “for sale” sign in its yard, next to Nicotine Alley (that’s what the high school guys called it because it was the first place they would get to out of sight of the school on the hill, where they could light up). This was the darkest part of the block, and I could barely see my shoes when I looked down. I peered down the alley and thought for a minute something moved in the inky blackness--no, just a shadow, I thought.

Skipping across the alley as silently as I could, I glanced up at Jim’s dad’s office right beside me, and thought of the painted metal stools and baskets and medical cabinets--and especially the skeleton Jim showed me once when we sneaked in the side door one afternoon. The front window was dark, but its drapes seemed to undulate behind the glass, and where they met I could have sworn a dark crack appeared. I shivered and stepped quickly past.

On the other side of the street a light was still on in Larry Bond’s house. His dad was a tree surgeon and always wore undershirts and boots and parked his big truck out in front. I never played much with Larry, though; his mom was a birdlike woman with a high, crackling voice/and she never seemed to let him do anything fun.

Miss Plum lived upstairs in the chocolate brick apartment building across from the Central School playground. She was probably reading the ‘Declaration of Independence” somewhere in her room right now. And across the street on my side I passed the columns of the Christian Science Church. I stepped down the high curb into Warren Street, remembering how I wrecked my bicycle flying off of it a few weeks before, and crossed Kauffman/Walk 3 over to the towering First Presbyterian Church with its pointed entrances.

But then I nearly stopped. There was a dark side walkway between First Presbyterian and the high wall of the Smith-Field Funeral Home property on the far side which I wouldn’t dream of going back into in the dark. I didn’t even dare look aside as I flew past it, though in the daytime I would often scramble up on top of the wide flat stone wall and run along its whole length without a care.

But at night--this night especially--I walked close to the wall, keeping my head crouched down below it, not even looking at Stultz-Briggs funeral home, the red, turreted mansion above, with its huge, black-framed, curtained windows and faded rose lights dimly glowing within. I crept on to Jefferson Street.

Then I raced full tilt across to Krogers’ and flew through the dark empty parking lot to my own side alley, where I expected a police car to stop and ask me where I had been and where I was going, past the back of the Elks with its garbage cans, beer boxes, and fire escape (I loved to mount its four stories to the roof for a beautiful view of the whole city), glancing down the pitch-dark space behind the building to the junkpile of broken toilet stools, sinks, and pipes that Metzger’s Plumbing threw out behind their store, where I had seen rats crawling in and out of once.

Finally I reached my own back door and peeked in quietly to see if anybody was in the rear of the house waiting for me.

"Woof!" the loud bark broke the stillness behind me, and I jumped around.

“Tuffy!” I cried. “Doggone it, are you still out?”

He wriggled from under the outside swing and pranced up to me, wagging his tail.

“Let’s get you inside, boy,” I said. “You big scaredy-cat, I bet you were scared to death, weren’t you? Don’t you know there’s nothing to be afraid of?”