The Book of Joby (9 page)

“
Ha!
Yer
out,
Benjamin!”

“I am not! It didn’t come
near
me!”

“Liar!”
snarled the big, sweaty boy who’d thrown the large, red dodgeball. “I hit you clean enough to eat on,
didn’t
I, Stives! Now you get out!” he hollered without waiting for Stives to answer. “It’s
my
turn t’go in!”

“You didn’t hit him,” Joby said. “We all saw.”

“You
would
lie for yer
liar friend,
” Lindwald sneered. “Why should I believe
you,
you skinny prick!” Balling his meaty hands into fists, he looked menacingly around the dodgeball circle and asked, “Anybody else think I didn’t see what I saw?”

No one answered. Lindwald had come to their school only a week and a half ago, and already everyone was scared stiff of him—even Tommy Stives, who had been the school’s uncontested bully until Jamie Lindwald’s family had moved here and enrolled their hulking, vicious, foul-mouthed, lying, smelly, sweaty kid in the fourth grade.

“Seeeee?”
Lindwald jeered. “Nobody says I didn’t hit yer wussy little friend but
his
wussy little friend. So both you wussies are lyin’. Get out, Benjamin.”

“Lindwald,” Benjamin persisted, “just ’cause nobody but Joby’s got guts enough to say so, doesn’t mean—”

“He’s not worth it, Benjamin,” Joby sighed. “He’ll just use up the whole recess fighting about it. Let him go.”

“But—”

“Benjamin!”
Joby growled as meaningfully as he could. “Let him go
in
!”

“Yeah,
Benjy
!” Lindwald taunted. “Listen to yer chicken little
boyfriend
! Least
he’s
got the sense t’be
scared.
”

Benjamin was staring at Joby in confusion, but Joby gave him a tiny nod, hoping Lindwald wouldn’t see, and pointedly squeezed the oversize red rubber dodgeball, which he’d been holding since Lindwald had missed Benjamin with it. Seeming to get it at last, Benjamin shrugged back into the dodgeball ring as Lindwald sauntered smugly to its center for his turn at being “it.”

“You think yer gonna tag me,” he grinned at Joby, “but ya better not throw too hard.” He smiled nastily. “Wouldn’ wanna hurt a innocent bystander, would ya.”

Lindwald began to dance back and forth opposite Joby, hands slightly out from his sides. He
was
a lot lighter on his feet than his lardy appearance suggested, but Joby had no intention of trying to hit him—yet. He only raised the ball above his head, and threw it up and over to Benjamin, calling, “Just throw it back!”

Ever faithful, Benjamin did as Joby asked.

In possession of the ball again, Joby looked cheerfully through Lindwald at his friend, and said, “Since he just lies, and everybody lets him, what’s the point in playing, right? Why don’t you and me just keep the ball ’til recess ends, eh, Benjamin?”

Benjamin shrugged, deferring to Joby as always.

Joby tossed the ball up over Lindwald’s head again, and Benjamin arced it easily back.

“What a pair a
tutu girls
!” Lindwald barked, ceasing his agile dodge dance and stepping toward Joby. “You can’t just take
our
ball, and play with
each other
!”

Joby lobbed the ball back to Benjamin. Lindwald turned to rush him for it, but Benjamin threw it up and over to Joby who caught it just as Lindwald turned to charge back at him. That’s when Joby swung his arms back and hurled the ball with all his pent-up fury straight at Lindwald—who dodged with unbelievable swiftness, so that Joby’s killing shot passed him completely, and hit Laura Bayer right in the face. Her glasses flew away as she fell to the ground to lie stunned until the blood began to trickle from her nose. Then she clutched her face and began to cry, louder and louder.

“Nice work,
butthead
!” Lindwald jeered at Joby.

Pale and trembling, Joby stood immobilized between white-hot rage at Lindwald and horrified guilt over what he’d done to poor Laura Bayer. His guilt won out, and he rushed to stand helplessly over the wailing little girl, and blurt out apologies.

“Laura! I’m
sorry
! It was a
accident
! Are you okay? Stop crying!
Please
stop crying! I didn’t mean to hurt you!”

“Didn’ I tell ya not to hurt the
innocent,
Joby?” Lindwald laughed.
Actually laughed
—while Laura Bayer lay there screaming and bleeding on the ground!

Like an angry cat, Joby whirled and leapt at Lindwald, sending a fist into his face hard and fast, but what happened was so incomprehensible that Joby simply froze, mouth agape in shock. As his punch had landed on Lindwald’s nose, Joby had
felt
it in his own face: the terrible ringing impact, the crunch of dislocated cartilage, the warm gush of blood in Lindwald’s sinuses. Yet, reaching up to touch his own nose, Joby found it undamaged.

Lindwald’s nose was already swelling as the blood appeared on his upper lip; but he just grinned hideously, and asked so softly that perhaps only Joby heard, “What’s a matter,
lady-killer
? Hurt yerself on my nose?”

Almost involuntarily, Joby’s arm swung back to launch another punch, but this time he could feel the terrible violence of it against Lindwald’s already broken nose even
before
the punch had landed, and his swing veered wide almost of its own volition, missing Lindwald entirely.

Only
then
did Lindwald strike back, knocking Joby onto his back next to
Laura Bayer and jumping down to slam him in the face, so that Joby’s nose ran red as well now.

“Give up,
dickhead
?” Lindwald demanded from astride Joby’s stomach.

“No!”
Joby hollered.

Lindwald hit him in the face again. “Give up?”

“No,” Joby said again, vaguely aware that his own pain seemed oddly dim and distant compared to the still resonant memory of Lindwald’s.

Lindwald was pulling his fist back for another punch when someone yanked him away so fast that the huge boy seemed lifted by a sudden wind. Then Joby saw Benjamin on top of Lindwald, thrashing him with both fists, his arms swinging like the little wooden windmill duck in the garden next to Joby’s house.

There was hardly time to feel grateful, though, before his teacher, Mrs. Nelson, and the sixth-grade teacher showed up and waded in to separate the boys. They were joined a moment later by the fifth-grade teacher, who brought wads of wet paper towel and said the principal was on his way. Everyone was picked up, dusted off, wiped clean, and dressed down by the time he arrived.

“I will see
you,
and
you,
and
you
in my office right
now
!” Mr. Leonard fired, pointing at Benjamin, Joby, and Jamie Lindwald.

As the three boys shuffled after him toward their doom, someone ran up behind Joby and touched his hand. He looked back to find Laura Bayer peering at him contritely through her somehow unbroken blue plastic-framed glasses.

“I’m sorry, Joby,” she whispered. “I know you didn’t mean to hit me.”

She turned before he could reply and ran back to where the others stood, watching them go as crowds have always watched condemned criminals being marched to the gallows. As they walked, Joby hung his head and imagined kneeling before King Arthur to explain what had happened, but it was
Merlin’s
voice he imagined.
You must be
perfect,
Sir Joby,
the wizard admonished,
or the devil will win, and Arthur will lose, and Camelot . . . Camelot will
burn.

Joby wondered miserably if he would get a second chance to be perfect.
Arthur, help me!
he thought, then remembered that Arthur
couldn’t
help him anymore. It was in the rules. Arthur had said so.

“Joby Peterson, stop straggling!” Mr. Leonard scolded over his shoulder. “If you’re man enough to punch people, you should be man enough to face the consequences. Now hurry up.”

“Yeah, Joby,”
Lindwald whispered without turning around. Joby didn’t need to see his face to hear the wicked grin in his voice. “If yer
man enough.
”

Joby waited for Mr. Leonard to yell at Lindwald for talking, but the principal just walked before them as if he hadn’t heard.

Trying to avoid her son, the school bus fishtailed, tires screaming on the asphalt, then slid full around, swatting Joby’s bike like a bug onto the pavement. Rigid with terror, Miriam watched, unable even to cry out as the huge yellow juggernaut screeched sidelong over her son’s doubled-over body, crumpling it savagely into the twisted blue wreckage of his bike. Only as the huge machine swiped two parked cars and shuddered to a halt did Miriam find her voice, and fill the sudden silence with her scream.

Her eyes snapped open with a jolt, and she sat up breathing hard.
Oh God! It had seemed so real!
She looked frantically at the clock. 4:00
P.M.!
Joby should be home!
Dear God, where was Joby?

Then she remembered the phone call from school—Joby’s detention—and slumped in relief. The whole day had been difficult. An inexplicable depression had settled over her shortly after Frank and Joby had left the house that morning. The phone call from Joby’s school had seemed the last straw. She’d gone to the couch for a nap, wondering if she were coming down with something.

What an awful dream,
she thought, rubbing her eyes and getting up to start on dinner. But for all she tried, she could not set the image of her son’s violent death aside.

She’d never have admitted it, even to Frank, but there had been a few times, a
very
few, when her dreams
had
seemed to come true. They’d all been about silly things: missing a bus, spilling a load of groceries, the trivial comment of some friend; things hardly worthy of premonition. But her father had always taken a surprising interest in dreams as well, both his own and hers, and had seemed to anticipate little things with uncanny accuracy at times. It had all combined to leave her with a nagging awareness of the
possibility
of . . . well . . . it was ridiculous. Dreams were nothing but dreams, thank God. Nothing but dreams.

They waited in Mrs. Nelson’s room while she corrected spelling tests, sitting well apart, hands folded, and silent. Jamie fidgeted impatiently. His nose was huge and purple by now, and the rigid plastic desk chairs were too small for his considerable bulk. Benjamin gazed toward the windows as if trying to flee through them with his eyes. Joby stared at his folded hands and relived Mr. Leonard’s humiliating judgment:

I don’t care what you think of Jamie’s sportsmanship, young man. You threw that ball far too hard, apparently on purpose; and then you were the first to throw a punch. Fighting is not acceptable here for any reason, and YOU, Joby Peterson, clearly lit the fuse. That is why I am giving Ben and Jamie just one day of detention while YOU will stay after school every day this week.

Mrs. Nelson looked up at the wall clock behind them.

“All right, boys. It’s four thirty. You may go.”

They erupted from their chairs like greyhounds through the starting gate.

“But, Joby, I’ll see you here again tomorrow. Remind your mother to expect you home late this week.”

“Yes, Mrs. Nelson.”

Outside the room, Jamie turned back to grin at Joby. “Don’t forget to tell your
mommy,
” he jeered, then turned and charged through the hallway door to freedom.