by Mark Wolters

Randall stood with his head down, shivering slightly even though the sun shone brightly through the trees, leaves moving gently in the early morning breeze, as he waited for the bus. Today was the first day of seventh grade. The dread in his gut felt like a sour and bitter liquid he was forced to swallow. Some of the horrid students who badgered him when he was in the sixth grade had moved on to the high school, but there were still those dreaded eighth graders roaming about the middle school he attended.

When the bus finally arrived, Randall, filled with trepidation, stepped onto the crowded bus. Since his was the second to last stop, every seat was filled with kids reluctant to move over so he could sit comfortably. Some of the seats contained one student, but they were older and hardly beneficent. Certainly, no high school student would humiliate himself by letting a seventh grader sit right next to him.

Randall stopped before a seat and with pleading eyes begged the silent question. He kept moving slowly to the back of the bus. The sound of a clearing throat made Randall turn around. In the mirror he saw the annoyed expression in the eyes of the bus driver.

“Would you sit down so I get this bus going, ya moron?” the bus driver seethed.

No one will let me sit down, he thought and perched on the last three inches of a seat containing two elementary students. Randall thought if only his old man would drive him to school this could all be avoided. School was only two miles away, but he knew his old man was usually too drunk from the previous night to get up in time. If he could get up earlier then he would have walked, but that never seemed to happen.

A kid behind him knocked Randall in the head with a stiff hand and Randall fell off the seat onto some sticky liquid. Great! Who the hell was that? What the hell was that on his hand and arms? Randall sought another seat edge further toward the front of the bus just to get away from whoever pushed him. The weakest kid with the weakest friends around him was his goal. Near the middle of the bus, he saw a sympathetic pair who actually gave him enough room to sit comfortably. Randall was so grateful he wanted to yell his gratitude, instead he just stared blankly out the windshield of the bus waiting for it to stop.

Once at school, he quickly walked through the halls, head down, so he didn’t have to face anyone. He didn’t even look for his locker. What was the point? There was nothing to put in there in the first place, and because he was so skinny, he just knew some bastard would try to shove him in the damn thing anyway.

As he searched for his home room, two hands grabbed his elbows and lifted him off the floor. The grip was like an iron clasp and it steered him to the restroom down the hall some ten feet from where he had been walking. Once in the restroom he stared at the person who had lifted him so easily. It was an eighth grader he didn’t know but had seen his photo in the yearbook football section. There were two other eighth graders with the big kid who he didn’t recognize. One of the boys with long blond hair and glasses stood in front of him, face almost touching Randall’s face and he pushed Randall backward a little bit. Randall felt his back touch the urinal, so he moved to the right where he stood between the two of them. Who were these bastards?

“We know you weren’t nice to my sister,” the boy said and shoved stiff fingers against his chest. Randall tried to back up, but all he could do was push harder against the wall.

“She told us what you did to her,” the boy who had lifted Randall into the bathroom said. “Now you need to answer for it.”

What I did to your sister? Who the hell are they talking about?

“She told me how you stared at her in gym class, you pervert. You were gawking at her, weren’t you?”

Randall looked at all the girls in gym class, particularly the ones that were developing breasts early. All the boys did that.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” the blond boy asked menacingly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Randall said.

“Not only did you stare at my sister, you harassed her!” he said and spit on the floor by Randall’s feet.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Randall said moving his feet slightly.

“What do we do with the little liar, guys? Huh? What should we do with this little liar?”

The two other boys crowded Randall, one on either side of the boy who was talking.

“I think we should definitely teach him a lesson,” the boy who grabbed his arms said.

“Good idea,” said the other boy. The third boy looked a lot like the one doing most of the talking, so Randall determined they must be brothers. He could not figure out who they were talking about. He remembered some of the girls harassing him, following him, teasing him, calling him terrible names outside during gym and recess, but as for anything he did to them, he just couldn’t recall. There were a few times he yelled at them to leave him alone, but that couldn’t be described as harassment, could it?

“Remember,” said the big boy who carried Randall into the bathroom. “Make sure nothing shows.”

What the hell did that mean?

“Are you going to answer me or not?” the blond boy asked viciously.

“I don’t know what you’re….”

Randall felt a fist in his gut. Unfortunately, he had not tensed up soon enough and it felt like the fist hit his spine. He bent over immediately and then felt a kick to his leg which sent him sprawling to the floor. Another kick connected in his groin, and he retched. Two more punches smacked his back and sides while three or four more kicks got his legs and butt. All this time Randall just covered his head with his arms, felt numb, couldn’t move, and couldn’t utter a single word. When it was over, he felt the sickness and crawled to the toilet and threw up. He had not eaten breakfast and really did not have much of a supper, so what he threw up was sort of a light yellow and very frothy. When he got up, the three boys were gone. He looked in the mirror and noticed there was nothing to indicate he’d just been beaten up other than his hair looked like hell. After he rinsed his mouth out with water several times, combed through his hair with his fingers, Randall left the bathroom.

The bell rang, shattering his dazed reverie and he stood in the emptying hall wondering where his homeroom class was. Somehow, he recalled the room number and a felt a moment of elation when he noticed it was next door to the bathroom he just stepped out of. It was all he could do to stop from crying as he entered the room, found a desk in the back and sat down. A pretty girl with blond curls turned around and stared at him. The look in her eyes made Randall glance back at her.

“Are you okay?” she asked softly, her voice sounding like a soothing rain helping to ease Randall’s growing agony.

“I just got beat up in the bathroom,” Randall said starting to cry.

“You don’t like you got beaten up,” the girl said shortly and turned around.

Randall stared at the back of her head for a moment, wiped away the tears with his right hand, sniffed quietly a few times and turned himself into a stoic, stone figure.

The rest of the morning Randall attended his classes like an automaton. Every time the teachers asked him why he didn’t have a pencil or paper or a backpack, he just grunted “Don’t know,” and hoped they left it at that. For each of his first three classes the teachers supplied him with a writing utensil and something to write on, but each gave him a stern warning about making certain brought the necessary supplies the next day.

Then it was lunch. The bell rang and dread covered Randall like the bruises he knew were growing on his body. Randall often skipped lunch last year just so he didn’t have to deal with the stigma of being the only student having to sit by himself.

It shouldn’t matter, he thought. It shouldn’t bother me; just eat lunch, drop off the tray, find your locker and then go to class again. What should it matter? But he stood in line this first lunch of the year. He was extremely pleased the sixth and seven graders had lunch at a different time then the eighth graders, because there was no way he’d be able to sit peacefully knowing those goons were in the same room. He grabbed a tray and allowed the lunch ladies to fill it with a macaroni and cheese substance that was offered in that particular line. When he saw it, he cursed himself and wished he’d gone in the line with the fried chicken fingers. Another lady scooped chopped peaches onto another section, and some green beans in another. Then he grabbed a slice of bread, a box of milk, then stood there with his tray scoping out a place to sit. A kid behind him bumped Randall hard enough so he nearly lost his tray. He quickly moved to get out of the way. Finally, he found a table where no one was sitting with only a few people chatting quietly close by.

He took a spoonful of the macaroni and cheese concoction, tasted it, spit it out and put his spoon back on the tray. Randall ate the peaches, at least they were good, then he took a bite of the dry bread, washed it down with some milk and simply could not eat anymore.

In the lunchroom Randall saw the monitoring teachers and lunchroom helpers making sure there were no food fights, students wandering where they shouldn’t or people starting a fight. While he observed all this, he felt the presence of someone standing behind him. At first it was a little uneasy feeling he had in his gut so he didn’t look around, but then he could stand it no longer and he turned quickly to see who was behind him. The person behind him took a handful of the very creamy macaroni and cheese and shoved it in his face.

None of the monitoring teachers witnessed this, though the uproar of laughter from other students made them turn their heads to see what was going on. Randall said nothing; he wiped his face with his hand and stood stoically. The person who smeared him with the food was still there, so Randall, out of pure desperation scooped up a handful of the entrée and made a valiant attempt to shove the gooey substance into the face of his violator. The instant he did this, a monitoring teacher saw him, Randall’s hand full of the stuff, his face dripping with the stuff.

“What’s going on here?” a six-foot five inch, deep voiced teacher said storming toward Randall.

It was the dreaded Mr. Cranberry. He grabbed Randall up by the collar, nearly lifting him off the floor. The man shoved him against a pillar which made Randall wince in pain. “I asked you a question, son!”

“As you can see, Mr. Cranberry, somebody got me in the face and that’s who did it,” Randall said and pointed.

As it turned out, Mr. Cranberry had a couple of sons going to the same middle school and sure enough, Randall pointed to the son who was in his grade. “He couldn’t possibly have done that, so you can get your lying carcass down to the principal’s office.” Mr. Cranberry kicked Randall in the seat of his pants, and he nearly went sprawling.

“You can see the stuff on his hands!” Randall said.

“What did I tell you?” Mr. Cranberry said with such ferocity that Randall had no choice but to comply.

Luckily no one followed him, so he was able to get into the bathroom, the same one where he had gotten beat up that morning, so he could wash his face and hands. Actually, it’d be a relief to go to the principal’s office to get away from the rat race. Unfortunately, when he got the to the principal’s office, Mr. Potter was there, and he immediately got on the phone to Randall’s father. Randall couldn’t believe his old man was at home at that time of morning, or at least awake enough to want to answer the phone.

“Mr. Fannigen?” Mr. Potter said. “This is Mr. Potter, principal of your son’s middle school. Your son is in the principal’s office for throwing food at someone during lunch. I wanted you to…”

Randall thought he heard his old man say something to the effect of “who gives a crap?”

“Mr. Fannigen, I need to let you know how serious…”

Randall thought he heard his old man say something about getting in a fight or burning something down, otherwise don’t bug him. Mr. Potter slowly hung up the phone.

“Randall,” Mr. Potter said. “Just try to stay out of trouble. I don’t want to see you in this office anymore this year, okay?”

The gentle tone in Mr. Potter’s voice surprised Randall. He’d never been sent to the principal before so he had no idea what to expect. The feeling he left with was not exactly pleasant, it was more like tolerable relief.

The rest of the school day was uneventful until the walk to the bus. Mr. Cranberry’s son and the three boys who assaulted him earlier stood in a tight group right next to Randall’s bus. Randall turned to the left to walk home. The warm air of early September would make walking home pleasant and besides, it would be better to get home late than deal with those boys.

His idea failed him because by the time he got three blocks away from school, the four boys jumped out at him from behind a large hedge. Randall stopped. In the pit of his stomach he felt a rock and his muscles felt the pain from earlier that day.

“This time we don’t need to be careful,” the blond boy said punching Randall’s nose causing blood to gush immediately. This time Randall screamed obscenities and then raced away before the big eighth grader could grab him. The boys sped after him but appeared to grow bored with the entire ordeal. Randall could hear them laugh loudly and say something about watching out tomorrow because of something…. The words became unintelligible, and Randall wasn’t going back to ask them to reiterate. Goddam kids just won’t leave me alone, he thought. And what’s the old man gonna say about my face and my shirt when he sees blood on it.

On the slow walk home Randall kept touching his face, checking on the bruises and cuts, wiping the blood away from his face as best he could. The sun was close to setting by the time he walked in the front door of his house a full hour later than he usually arrived home. He opened the door and the old man stood there, standing over him like a huge, stinking ogre.

“Got into a fight, huh?” he said. “Goddam kids getting in to fights!” His father smacked him alongside the head with an open hand. Randall fell backward on the steps, just barely keeping his head from hitting the cement. “Just keep out of trouble, ya dipshit. I need to go into town, and I won’t be back until late, so just find something to eat. Don’t let kids hit you like that, ya moron!”

While his old man was out, Randall sat on the couch in the living room placing his head in his hands. What to do about the bastards at school? There was no way he could make it the entire year with those idiots harassing him daily.

He remembered the old man had a tire punch, an eighteen or twenty inch piece of tapered, cylindrical metal used to repair a flat tire that would work beautifully as a weapon. Randall darted to the garage, digging through old boxes, looking through all the tool cases scattered on the shelves and counters. After two hours of nearly frantic searching, he let out a small squeal of delight when he located it and a worn-out but usable backpack in a tattered, mouse eaten box. The tire punch was oily, so Randall took a rag and cleaned it until it shone in the dim light of the garage. Those sons of bitches will never bother me again. I’m gonna break their goddam arms!

It was after ten in the evening and the old man still had not come home. Randall knew it would be another of those nights when he would be gone until morning, or possibly the next day or two. The longest the miserable bastard was gone was seventeen days. Randall was fortunate his mother just happened to come into town. She bought groceries and even cooked a few meals he could place in the freezer because she didn’t stay long. He pleaded with his mother to take him with her, but she simply said no. Can’t and won’t do it. It was obvious to Randall his mother was drunk the entire time she was there.

The next day Randall gathered school supplies and shoved them in his tattered, red back-pack and then stuffed the tire punch in his pants. This time he would go on the offensive rather than wait for the boys to come after him. When the bus dropped him off at school, he surveyed the school yard, searching for the boys who beat him up. Then the girl who had harassed him in the sixth grade walked by him without saying a word and he remembered who she was. Alicia Atkinson.  Her brothers were Richard and Mark. Richard was the bastard who threw the first punch.

He never knew the big kid’s name, but that was who he saw first. The large, dopey looking kid stood like a centurion by the double glass entry doors. As Randall walked by, he sneered and snickered at the boy without looking at him, hoping he would follow. Randall quickened his pace, stepping into the nearest men’s restroom. Here he stopped to catch his breath as he awkwardly removed the tire punch from his pants. The door opened so fast Randall barely had time to ready himself in case it was the big kid, and there he stood wearing an incredulous look on his face.

“Hey kid!” the boy said, holding up a fist.

Randall did not answer, he simply swung the tire punch as hard he could on the arm of the boy. After the sickening crack, the boy screamed in terror and agony. Randall sprinted out of the bathroom, made a quick survey of the surroundings, slowed down his gait to a normal pace while his heart raced. Now to find Richard and Mark, those sonofabitches!

He could feel the heat in his face. Students walking past him seemed only ghosts. The singleness of purpose enveloped him, but he kept his weapon hidden.

The next corner, covered with drawings from the sixth-grade art class, one of which happened to be his from last year, he encountered Richard and just few feet away from him stood Mark. The two boys faced each other, deep in some unintelligible conversation Randall didn’t care to hear. As he walked closer, he thought I can’t risk them ganging up on me cause I won’t be able to take them both. Just swoop in like a marine ready for the kill, smack that bastard on the shoulder or the leg or something. He could feel his breath getting quicker and his pulse was pounding in his head like a giant church bell. He slowly removed the tire punch, all twenty inches, from his pants, held the small end and lifted it high.

“You son of a bitch,” he said quietly as he brought the metal down hard on Richard’s left hand which was resting in his pocket. Richard howled in pain. Mark and the four or five other students standing close by turned quickly to see what had happened, but before anyone could even see what was going on, Randall brought the steel weapon down on Mark’s shin. Again, he heard that sickening crack and Mark lay on the floor howling in agony. Randall moved quickly to be certain none of the students standing over the two could tell who was responsible for the two boys writhing in agony. The next step was to get the hell out of this school, but if I see that Cranberry kid, I’m gonna bash in his head!

Following that thought, Randall felt nauseated and slipped into a bathroom so he could vomit. He did not quite make it to a toilet but managed to kneel down on a clean portion of the floor to finish. When he stumbled out of the stall, he staggered to the sink so he could rinse his mouth. The cold water cleared his head and he spit several times before he noticed someone at the urinal.

Randall turned and there he was, Cranberry, taking a leak. Should I just hit him right now? This goddam thing could kill him, so I better not hit him in the head. Then the gravity of what he’d done stopped him from taking the weapon out.

“Hey, Cranberry,” Randall said. “Don’t ever touch me again.”

Randall shoved his right hand against Cranberry’s head and pushed it quickly into the wall. Blood poured out of Cranberry’s nose and when Randall left the bathroom, he could hear the boy cry. Randall turned to look back at the hapless, squalling boy holding his nose as the blood ran down his hand and Randall noticed Cranberry had pissed himself.

Randall smiled as he located an obscure exit of the school so he could ditch the tire punch. Only a block away from the school, just beyond the old cinder track was a small woods and it was there that he flung the weapon. After hearing it hit a tree, he nonchalantly walked back to the school, entered his first class of the day, found his desk, and sat down with a vacant smile on his face.

During first hour Randall could not concentrate on anything because he knew it would be a matter of minutes before he was called down to the principal’s office or before the police came. Wouldn’t the old man be shocked to see the police coming after his son this time? But no officers showed up and no call to the principal’s office was made. By lunch time, when Randall sat alone at a table farthest from the lunch line, he heard people talking about how three boys broke their fingers, arms and legs fighting with each other. Then a grim smile of satisfaction grew on his face when he heard three boys at a table close to him talk about the crybaby Cranberry who peed all over himself and fell and broke his nose. Poor old crybaby Cranberry.

Then Randall looked at his empty table and felt sick again, not so sick that he had to run to the bathroom, but emptiness and fear encompassed him to the very core of his being. Nothing had really changed. The Atkinson brothers and the big boy and crybaby Cranberry would probably never bother or beat him up again, but the victory was fleeting and naked.

While riding the bus home, he sat alone close to the front so he could get off as soon as possible. As soon as the bus stopped, he silently exited the bus and ran up the sidewalk to the front door of his house, flung it open and ran right into his old man.

“Goddammit kid,” he said. “Watch where the hell you’re going!”

He wanted so badly to tell him what he’d done that day, how he’d protected himself, stood up for himself, made their family name respectable to the bullies, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. The smell of liquor pervaded the house. The old man could barely stand up without weaving and it was not even four in the afternoon.

“Now come on!” his old man yelled. “If that whore of a mother of yours was home we’d at least have supper on by now.” Then his tone turned gentle for the next statement. “You know she could cook pretty good when we first got together. Then we had you. We had to go and have you. What a mistake! I used to say when you were screamin’ your little head off because your mother was too drunk to feed you and I didn’t know how, God take this little shit away from us! Why’d you give this mistake of nature? You know boy, I never loved you because you messed up everything.”

Randall felt fear, anger and despair all at once through his old man’s slurred words.

“Shut up!” he said with tears streaming down his face. “Just shut up! Stop talking like that. You’re just a stupid drunk!”

He tried to run upstairs, but the old man grabbed his arm and put his face right next to his.

“You think you can talk to me that way, doncha?” he slurred. “You think you can get away with it? Little boy, I can’t tell you how many times I came this close to smothering your little body when you were just a tot. I wanted to snuff you out, but I knew your mother would kill me if I did something so necessary, so you listen to me! I may be a bastard of an old man, but I can take you out just like that.”

And he punched Randall in the face sending his son sprawling to the floor. Gripping Randall’s shirt, he pulled him up from the floor causing the shirt to rip.

“Ah,” he said. “Looks like someone’s been giving you the what for before me. Some kids at school you pissed off?”

He turned Randall around kicked him hard in the rear sending him stumbling across the room. Randall held out his hands to break his fall on the hard wood floor as his old man stormed after him like an enraged marine sergeant.

Randall wished he had never gotten rid of that tire punch. Desperately he searched for something he could use to protect himself. As the old man got within arm’s reach, Randall jumped up and grabbed the baseball bat sitting on a shelf above the stereo system. He didn’t even think or look before he took a swing, hitting his father in the ribs. The old man went down like a towel falling from a washing line and he lay crumpled on the floor. Randall took the bat and hit him again on the arm, hard enough to sprain he thought, but not to break.

“Don’t ever hit me again you bastard,” Randall seethed, spit flying out of his mouth. “Don’t ever threaten me again.”

Mixed with moans of pain, his old man started laughing making him wince.

“You need to call a doctor for me. I think you broke some of my ribs.”

That the old man laughed infuriated Randall and he held the bat over his head and stood over him with a menacing look covering his face. His old man held his hand up with a grim smile on his face as Randall twirled the bat like a major leaguer getting ready to smash a fast ball over the fence.

Fear filled his eyes as Randall stood over him with that bat still twirling.

“Okay, okay, sorry I laughed and sorry I hit you. Won’t happen again. Get on the phone and call an ambulance. I’ll tell them some goddam story they’ll believe.”

Randall didn’t move, the bat still over his head, red faced, and enough adrenaline pumping through him so that he felt he could lift a car. The rage in his eyes must have made his old man wonder what his son was going to do, because he stopped laughing and he stopped smiling.

“C’mon, boy,” he pleaded. “You wouldn’t hit you’re old man, now, really?”

Randall swung the bat down as hard as he could. The floorboards burst right next to his old man’s ears and some wood splinters stuck to his face. They both were silent for a very long time. They could hear the wall clock ticking.

“Go call an ambulance for me,” his old man finally croaked.

Randall looked up the number in the phone book and called the ambulance.

Mark Wolters has stories accepted this year by Straylight and The Main Street Rag. He’s had two stories published in the St. Cloud Reformatory magazine The Pillar, two stories published in a local magazine Spout, two stories published in The Atrocity, one story published in the St. Cloud State University literary magazine The Literary Syndrome, and one story published in the Tabard Inn.

Mark lives in Sartell, Minnesota with his wife, two sons, and two beagles. He participates in NaNoWriMo yearly, he teaches 5^th and 6^th grade elementary, and he enjoys writing music and playing guitar.