Men from Boys Read online

  He took a tentative step forward.

  The one in the cap wheeled round suddenly, clutching the phone. ‘Piece of cheap shit!’ His arm snapped back, then forward and Vincent watched the phone explode against the wall, shattering into pieces of multi-coloured plastic.

  The crack of the phone against the bricks changed something.

  By the time Vincent looked again, the gap had been filled. The three stood square on to him, their bodies stiff with energy despite their efforts to appear relaxed. The space between them all was suddenly charged.

  Vincent had no idea how he looked to them, what his face said about how he felt at that moment. He looked at their faces and saw hatred and excitement and expectation. He also saw fear.

  ‘Last chance,’ the one in the cap said.

  The boy was stunned by the size of the crowd, though it was nothing unusual. He could remember, when he’d been one of the onlookers himself as a child, thinking that there couldn’t possibly be this many people in the whole world. Today, as at the same moment every year, those that could not get a clear view were standing on tables and other makeshift platforms. They were perched on roofs and clustered together in the treetops.

  He and his age-mates were paraded together, one final time, carried aloft like kings. His eyes locked for a few seconds with a friend as they passed each other. Their Adam’s apples were like wild things in their throats.

  While the boy moved on shoulders above the teeming mass of bodies, the dancing and the drumming grew more frenzied. Exhausted, he summoned the strength to sing one final time, while below him the basket was passed around and each relative given a last chance to hand over more money or pledge another gift.

  Now, it was only the fizzing in the boy’s blood that was keeping him upright. There were moments – a sickening wave of exhaustion, a clouding of his vision as he reached for a high note – when he was sure he was about to pass out, to topple down and be lost or trampled to death. He was tempted to close his eyes and let it happen . . .

  At the moment when the noise and the heat and the passion of the crowd was at its height, the boy suddenly found himself alone with Joseph and Francis at the edge of the market place. There was space around him as he was led along a track towards a row of undecorated huts.

  ‘Are you a woman?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘No,’ the boy said.

  The boy wondered if thinking about his mother and father made him one. He knew that they would be waiting, huddled together among the coffee plants, listening for the signal that it was over. Did wishing that he was with them, even for the few moments it would take to shake his father’s hand and smell his mother’s neck, make him less than Grade A?

  ‘Are you a woman?’ Francis repeated.

  ‘No!’ the boy shouted.

  His uncles stepped in front of him and pushed open a door to one of the peat latrines. ‘This will be your last chance,’ Joseph said.

  The boy moved inside quickly, dropped his shorts and squatted above the hole formed by the square of logs. He looked up at the grass roof, then across at his uncles who had followed him inside. He knew that they had sworn to stay with him until the final moment, but honestly, what did they think he was going to do? Did they think he would try to kill himself by diving head first into the latrine?

  Did they think he would try to run?

  Joseph and Francis smiled as the shit ran out of him like water. ‘Better now than later,’ Francis said.

  The boy knew that his uncle was right.

  He stood and wiped himself off. He felt no shame, no embarrassment at being watched. He was no more or less than a slave to it now.

  A slave to the ritual.

  The beer can hit him first, bouncing off his shoulder. It was almost empty, and Vincent was far more concerned by the beer that had sprayed on to his cheek and down his shirt. The can was still clattering at his feet when the cigarette fizzed into his chest. He took a step back, smacking away the sparks, listening to the skinny one and the one with the shaved head jabbering.

  ‘I don’t believe it, he’s still fucking here . . .’

  ‘Is he? It’s getting dark, I can’t see him if he isn’t smiling . . .’

  ‘He said he wasn’t looking for trouble . . .’

  ‘Well he’s going to get a fucking slap.’

  ‘He’s just taking the piss now . . .’

  ‘We gave the cunt every chance . . .’

  ‘They’re all taking the piss . . .’

  ‘He’s the one that’s up for it, if you ask me. It’s him who’s kicking off, don’t you reckon? He could have walked away and he just fucking stood there like he’s in a trance. He’s trying to face us down, the twat. Yeah? Don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Come on then . . .’

  ‘Let’s fucking well. Have. It.’

  Vincent became aware that he was shifting his weight slowly from one foot to the other, that his fists were clenched, that there was a tremor running through his gut.

  A hundred yards away, on the far side of the estate, he saw a figure beneath a lamp-post. He watched it move inside the cone of dirty, orange light. Vincent wondered if whoever it was would come if he shouted . . .

  His eye darted back to the boy in the cap, and to the boy’s hand, which tilted slowly as he emptied out what drink there was left in his bottle.

  The noise in the market place died as each one stepped forward, then erupted again a minute or two later when the ritual had been completed.

  It was the boy’s turn.

  The crowd had moved back to form a tunnel down which he walked, trancelike, his uncles slightly behind. He tried to focus on the two red splodges at the far end of the tunnel and when his vision cleared he saw the faces of the cutters for the first time. Their red robes marked them out as professionals – men who travelled from village to village, doing their jobs and moving on. They were highly skilled, and had to be. There were stories, though the boy had never seen such a thing happen, of cutters being set upon by a crowd and killed if a hand was less than steady; if a boy were to die because of one of them.

  The boy stopped at the stone, turned to the first cutter and handed over his knife. He had sharpened it every day on the soft bark of a rubber tree. He had confidence in the blade.

  In three swift strokes, the knife had sliced away the fabric of the boy’s shorts. All he could feel was the wind whispering at the top of his legs. All he could hear was the roaring of the blood, loud as the river, inside his head.

  He was offered a stick to clutch, to brace against the back of his neck and cling on to. This was the first test and with a small shake of the head it was refused. No Grade A man would accept this offer.

  He was hard as stone . . .

  His hands were taken, pressed into a position of prayer and placed against his right cheek. His eyes widened and watered, fixed on the highest point of a tree at the far end of the market place.

  Repeating it to himself above the roaring of the river. Hard as stone . . .

  The boy knew that this was the moment when he would be judged. This was everything – when the crowd, when his family would be watching for a sign of fear. For blinking, for shaking, for shitting . . .

  He felt the fingers taking the foreskin, stretching it.

  Focused on the tree . . . chalk-white ghost-boy . . . stiff and still as any statue . . .

  He felt the weight of the blade, cold and quick. Heavy, then heavier and he heard the knife pass through the skin. A boom and then a rush . . .

  This was when a Grade A man might prove himself, jumping and rubbing at his bloody manhood. The crowd would count the jumps, clap and cheer as those very special ones asked for alcohol to be poured into the wound . . .

  The boy was happy to settle for Grade B. His eyes flicked to his uncle Joseph who signalled for the second cutter to come forward. The knife was handed across and, with three further cuts, the membrane – the ‘second skin’ – was removed.

  A whistle was blown and th
e boy started slightly at the explosion of noise from the crowd. It was all over in less than a minute.

  Everything took on a speed – underwater slow or blink-quick – a dreamlike quality of its own as the pain began . . .

  A cloth was wrapped around the boy’s shoulders.

  He was gently pushed back on to a stool.

  He lowered his eyes and watched his blood drip on to the stone at his feet.

  There was a burning then, and a growing numbness as ground herbs were applied, and the boy sat waiting for the bleeding to stop. He felt elated. He stared down the tunnel towards the far side of the market place, towards what lay ahead.

  He saw himself lying on a bed of dried banana leaves, enjoying the pain. Only a man, he knew, would feel that pain. Only a man would wake, sweating in the night, crying out in agony after a certain sort of dream had sent blood to where it was not wanted.

  He saw himself healed, strutting around the market place with other men. They were laughing and talking about the different grades that their friends had reached. They were looking at women and enjoying the looks that they got back.

  The boy looked down the tunnel and saw, clearer than anything else, the baby that he’d been handed the day before. He watched it again, happily pissing all over him.

  He saw its fat, perfect face as it stared up at him, kicking its legs.

  The skinny one and the one with the shaved head were drifting towards him.

  Vincent knew that if he turned and ran they would give chase, and if they caught him they would not stop until they’d done him a lot of damage. He felt instinctively that he had a chance of coming off better than that if he stood his ground. Besides, he didn’t want to run.

  ‘I bet he’s fucking carrying something,’ the skinny one said.

  The one with the shaved head reached into his jacket pocket, produced a small plastic craft knife. ‘Blacks always carry blades . . .’

  Vincent saw the one with the cap push himself away from the bollard he was leaning against. He watched him take a breath, and drop his arm, and break the bottle against the bollard with a flick of his wrist.

  Vincent took a step away, turned and backed up until he felt the wall of the block behind him.

  Hard as a stone . . .

  ‘Stupid fucker.’

  ‘He can’t run. His arse has gone . . .’

  ‘I bet he’s filling his pants.’

  Vincent showed them nothing. As little as his father had shown when the blade sang against his skin. He tensed his body but kept his face blank.

  ‘Three points in the bag, lads,’ the one with the broken bottle said. ‘Easy home win . . .’

  Vincent had learned a lot about what you gave away and what you kept hidden. They could have his phone and whatever money they could find. He would give them a little blood and a piece of his flesh if it came to it, and he would try his hardest to take some of theirs.

  Vincent looked down the tunnel and saw them coming. He would not show them that he was afraid, though. He would not give them that satisfaction.

  He was Grade A.

  POINTS

  Lawrence Block

  The Knicks were hosting a first-year expansion team at the Garden, and when the two men arrived, thirty minutes before game time, half the seats were empty. ‘I’m afraid it’s not going to be much of a game,’ the younger man said, ‘and it looks as though I’m not alone in that opinion. Last time I was here the Lakers were in town and there wasn’t an empty seat.’

  ‘We’re early,’ the older man said. ‘They won’t sell out tonight, but they’ll come closer than you might guess. Remember, this is New York. A lot of guys don’t even leave their desks until seven-thirty for a game that starts at eight.’

  ‘That’s me you’re describing. Not tonight, but the Laker game? There were points on the board by the time I got to my seat. And it would have been the same story tonight if I hadn’t put my foot down. Carrigan came into my office at half past six with something that had to be done and would only take me a minute, swear to God. “Not tonight,” I told him. “I’m meeting my Dad.”’

  Anyone looking at them would have suspected they were father and son. The resemblance was unmistakable, in their faces and in their easy loose-limbed grace. Both were tall men, standing several inches over six feet. Both had been slim in their youth and both had thickened some around the middle with age, the father more than the son. The son was perhaps an inch taller than the father, a fact which had not gone unremarked at their meeting a few minutes earlier.

  ‘You’re taller,’ Richard Parmalee had said. ‘I don’t suppose your pituitary gland kicked into overdrive when nobody was looking. Have you been taking growth hormone?’

  The son, whose name was Kevin, shook his head and grinned.

  ‘Then the odds are you’re not taller,’ the father said. ‘So, I guess you’ve got lifts in your shoes . . .’

  ‘Just insoles, but they don’t make you any taller.’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of. Well, where does logic inexorably lead us? I’m shrinking.’

  ‘You look the same to me.’

  ‘Hell, I’m not melting away like the Wicked Witch of the West. Everybody shrinks, starting around forty or forty-five, but it takes fifteen or twenty years before it’s enough to notice. You’re not even forty for another year and a half, so you’ve got a while before your cuffs start scraping the pavement.’

  ‘That hasn’t happened to you.’

  ‘No, if I’ve lost half an inch that’s a lot. It’s enough to notice, but only just. And I only just noticed it myself within the past month or so. I knew it was something that happens to everybody, but I figured I was different, it wouldn’t happen to me. Same as right now you’re listening and nodding and telling yourself it won’t happen to you.’

  The younger man laughed. ‘Got me. Exactly what I was telling myself.’

  ‘And who knows? You might be right. You’ve got a few years and by then they may have something to prevent it. I wouldn’t put it past them.’

  As Richard Parmalee had predicted, there were a lot of late arrivals and most seats were occupied by game time. The Knicks, eleven-point favorites according to the line in the papers, jumped off to an early lead that opened up to twenty-two points at half-time.

  ‘Well, it’s not much of a game,’ the son said. ‘I was afraid of that.’

  ‘No, but it’s still fun to watch them. I remember coming here to see the Harlem Globetrotters when I was still in high school. They were playing an exhibition game against somebody, probably the Knicks. I couldn’t believe the things they did. Now everybody does that, but without the clowning.’

  ‘They’re still around, the Globetrotters.’

  ‘And they’re probably as entertaining as ever, but less remarkable, because everybody plays like that. It’s a completely different game than when I played it.’

  ‘It looks completely different to me,’ the son said, ‘so I can only imagine the difference from your point of view.’

  ‘In my day we played on our feet. Your generation played the game on your toes. And now it’s a game played in the air.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘And I swear the rules are different.’

  ‘Well, the three-point shot . . .’

  ‘Of course, but that’s not what I mean. They routinely commit what would have been a travelling violation, but you never see it called. If a guy’s driving to the basket it doesn’t seem to matter how many steps he takes.’

  ‘I know. There’s a rule, but I can’t figure out what it is.’

  ‘And they’ll turn the ball over when they’re dribbling. Double dribble, that used to be, and you lost possession. Not any more.’

  ‘I like the three-point shot, though,’ Kevin Parmalee said.

  ‘Improves the game. No question. But only at the pro distance. The college three-pointer is too close.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous. And yet the college game’s more fun to watch. It’
s not as good a game, but it’s more exciting.’

  They went on chatting comfortably until play resumed, then fell largely silent and watched the action on the court. The visitors narrowed the gap in the third quarter and with three minutes to play only six points separated the two teams. Then the Knicks surged, and led by fourteen when the buzzer sounded.

  On their way out the son said, ‘Well, they made a game of it. It was never close, but you wouldn’t have known that from the fans.’

  ‘They beat the spread,’ the father said, ‘and that wasn’t a foregone conclusion. It could have gone either way until the final seconds.’

  ‘You figure that many of the people here had money on the game?’

  ‘Probably more than you’d think, but that’s not the point. We’re New Yorkers, Kev. When we root for a team, we don’t just want to win the game. We want to beat the spread.’

  ‘And we did, so hoorah for our side.’

  ‘Amen. It was a good game.’

  ‘And God knows the price was right.’

  ‘You told me who gave you the tickets, but I forget. One of the senior partners?’

  ‘No, one of Joe Levin’s clients. He gave them to Joe, and Joe thought he could go and then couldn’t, which was why the whole thing was as last-minute as it was.’

  ‘Terrific seats.’

  ‘Well, some corporation pays for them, and lists them as a business expense. So they didn’t cost us anything and they didn’t cost anybody else anything, either.’

  ‘That’s the way it ought to be,’ Richard Parmalee said. ‘I made a reservation at Keen’s, not that I think we’ll need one at this hour on a week night. That sound all right to you?’

  ‘As long as it’s on me.’

  ‘Not a chance.’

  ‘Hey, I asked you out, remember?’

  ‘You got the tickets, I get the dinner check.’

  ‘The tickets were free, remember?’

  ‘So’s the dinner, as far as you’re concerned. You’re not going to win this argument, Kevin, so don’t even try.’