how the fight began
short story
How the ‘fight’—more of a squaring up and bumping of chests, really—began was insignificant compared to how it ended: with Marc crying.
The potential combatants halted, embarrassed for him and perhaps for themselves, to witness such an emasculating action in the face of their bravado. The interested friends, who had just begun the show of holding them back from each other, were also perplexed and moved to stop by the tears.
Before anyone else could break the awkwardness, Marc excused himself, left his special boot-shaped beer glass on the peanut-shell-covered picnic table, and exited the biergarten through the garage door at the front, stepping out onto the deck where his friend Jorge was smoking a cigarette.
“Hey dude. What happened there? Sounded like a commotion,” Jorge asked.
“I don’t even know,” Marc said, wiping away his tears with his jacket sleeve. Jorge could not have noticed them in the half-light of the stringed bulbs that lit the deck.
“Ciggie?” Jorge offered.
“Sure,” Marc surprised himself by taking it.
“Whoa dude,” Jorge said. “Really flipping on the party switch tonight, huh?”
“Guess so,” Marc said, letting Jorge light it for him.
Marc inhaled, spluttered, and coughed like he had never had a cigarette before, which, of course, he hadn’t. Jorge laughed.
The nicotine fused with Marc’s brain and provided the fresh insight and introspection that drugs sometimes do, especially drugs never tried before.
Why did he cry, and how did the fight begin?
The fight at fifth-grade recess began with the kickball game, the gym teacher absent long enough for the normal rules to dissolve into playground law. Johnny Miller had taken a very aggressive stance at home plate upon catching the red rubber ball, and Steve Byrd had tried to duck or dive around him on his way around third. Johnny eventually managed to peg him in the face, which Steve took umbrage with and speared Johnny to the ground.
Marc, who had just crossed home plate himself, was a few meters away from it all, and this proximity caused a lump in his throat to grow and swell into tears—tears that did not stop even after the class was deposited back to their classroom by the rage-filled gym teacher, tears that continued even as the teacher reprimanded them, tears that were still flowing as he sat in the principal’s office, where the teacher had sent him to be interrogated as to the genesis of the fight.
“What happened, Marcus?” the vice principal asked. “Did it have to do with you? Were they picking on you, or something? Is that why you’re crying?”
Marc sniffed, wiped his nose with his bare arm, leaving streaks of snot that only a fifth grader could be apathetic to. “No,” he said. “Johnny was coming home, and Steve hit him in the face with the ball and he got mad, so he tackled him.”
The vice principal could tell he wasn’t lying, that a boy who cried like that wasn’t a boy who lied. She took off her glasses and polished them as she asked, in a resigned tone: “So then why are you crying, Marcus?”
Marc was crying because he forgot he had soccer practice.
He forgot he had soccer practice for the same reason he forgot his trumpet on the bus, was always losing his glasses, couldn’t remember his mother’s coworkers' names, forgot to carry the one and failed his math test.
Fourteen-year-old Marc was—as his dad called it—a ‘space cadet.’
Asking his father for a ride at the penultimate hour, out of routine, off schedule—especially when his father was already in a mood—was always going to be a bad idea, but what could he do? He wanted to go to practice.
His father had sighed. Always a sigh.
Marc and his sister would measure their dad’s mood in Sighs Per Hour—SPH. They always thought it was a quirk of their father’s until Marc learned in college that sighs were a neurological response to emotional regulation. It made sense—the more sighs, the more his father’s emotions were shifting, and they were always shifting, always in extremis with relation to the various inputs around him. The more unplanned those inputs, the higher the SPH rose.
“I have an important faculty meeting at four,” his father had said when he was done sighing. “But I guess I can take you if I can get back before I have to leave for the college. It would have been nice to know, in advance, though, next time.”
For the same reason Marc had forgotten he had practice, he also forgot where practice was supposed to be. Some days of the week they had one field, some days another, but only if that day was an even day and wasn’t being used by the field hockey team, etc. They had shown up to the wrong field, arriving ten minutes before practice was supposed to start and finding it populated by a youth lacrosse team.
His father stood with him at the edge of the parking lot, arms folded.
“I’m going to be late to my meeting,” his father said.
“I texted my friend and he said it was here…” Marc said, checking the text messages on his Motorola Razr.
“Okay, well, whose fault is this?” his father said, sighing, checking his watch. SPH was well over four at this point, approaching a record. “Is this his fault, or is this yours?”
There was a correct answer to this question, and Marc knew it. It was then the crying started.
“It’s mine,” Marc answered. “I’m sorry, Dad. Will you please take me to the other field?”
“It’s okay, Marcus,” his father said, stroking his beard. “We all make mistakes. Are you going to do it again?”
“No.”
“Then feel this hurt. Feel it deeply. And you’ll make sure it never happens again.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be late to my meeting. But I’ll still take you to practice,” his father said.
They drove to the other field, the only sound between them Marcus’s sobs intermingled with his father’s sighs.
“This is an important meeting I’ll be late to, and I would have never been late if you just remembered you had practice. You have to consider others when you make a commitment to something. You have to consider others when you ask for favors covering your mistakes,” his father said.
“I will,” Marc said, wiping away the tears, composing himself before seeing his teammates.
“What is it I always say?” his father asked him, reaching across and rubbing his son’s head.
What his father always said was also said on the day of the fight on the playground.
Because he was inconsolable and the fight had so obviously taken an emotional toll on him despite Marc being (apparently) uninvolved, the school administration had called his parents to retrieve him from school and let him go home for the rest of the afternoon. His father came to pick him up.
“So, what happened? You were in a fight?” his father asked as they walked out to the car, the anger in his voice palpable.
“No,” Marc said. His father softened.
“Then what was the problem, bud?” he asked, putting a hand on his son’s back.
“I was just upset. I’ve never seen a fight before. I was just…scared, I guess. I felt like it was my fault for some reason.”
“Marcus, what is it I always say?” his father said as they got in the car. “The world does not revolve around you.”
“The world does not revolve around me,” Marc repeated.
As he buckled himself into the backseat, Marc thought about who the world must revolve around. Was there one world, revolving around one person? Was the world ambivalent, did it revolve on its own? Or could it be he had his own world, and his world revolved around him, and everyone else’s world revolved around themselves as well?
And although he was done crying, he felt even more upset than he had before.
Marc was upset when he could not fully finish the cigarette so generously given to him by Jorge. It was too disgusting to continue, but the beer he had imbibed via boot-shaped glass eased his guilt.
“I guess I should go back in,” Marc said, stabbing out the half-smoked cigarette on the concrete ash holder.
“Me too,” Jorge said. “Brick out here.”
They went back to the same table Marc was at before, his friends still there, their conversations hushing as he approached. The acquaintances who had been part of the inciting incident were still at a picnic table on the other side of the bar; the altercation hadn’t even been enough to get anyone thrown out.
“Hey Marc, you okay?” his friend Charlie asked as Marc grabbed the large boot-shaped glass from the table and stepped toward the bar.
“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” he said, turning his back on them as quickly as he could. He could hear Jorge telling them about the cigarette he tried and they, in turn, telling Jorge what he had missed.
Marc brought the boot to the bar and caught the eye of the bartender with blissful ease.
“How much is it for das boot?” he asked, reaching for his wallet.
“For the boot? Oh, no, hon—your friends paid for that,” she told him. “Do you want anything else?”
“They did? Oh, okay…well, no thanks then,” he said, leaving the boot-glass on the bar and turning to go.
“Wait!” the bartender said. He turned back. “The boot, you know—part of the birthday special is that you get to keep das boot.”
“Oh really?” he said, something like a smile trudging its way across his face.
“Yes!” She handed it to him. “Happy birthday, by the way!”
“Thanks,” he said, taking it.
He sighed and looked across the biergarten at his friends, smiling and laughing, and didn’t think they needed to be bothered with him anymore that night, nor did he himself need to be bothered with facing his own embarrassment.
Marc left the bar and walked home alone, the glass boot tucked under his jacketed arm, how the fight began less relevant than ever as the world revolved slowly around him.
thanks for reading this story involving a boot-shaped beer glass. even if you didn’t like it, maybe click the little heart button so that people who might will find it.
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS:
How do you think the fight began?
How do you think Marc’s father influenced his personality?
thanks for reading PNP, where fights begin and sometimes end.
This is such a great story. I liked how Marc sighed at the end, just like his dad. Fun note: during the part where it describes all of the things Marc forgets, it says "he forgot to carry the one" and I spent a ridiculous amount of time going "forgot to carry the one WHAT?" ...I thought there was a word missing. Because I'm an idiot.
I've noticed a number of people commenting that the father was ‘passive-aggressive’ and almost blaming him for Marc’s highly sensitive reaction to conflict.
But it’s not so simple is it? First of all, the father’s attitude may not be saintly but who’s a saint? He ended up taking the kid to soccer practice though he moaned about it. I would have said, and in fact did say, “Kid, you fucked up, plan better next time.” My own son is not noticeably traumatized by this no-nonsense treatment. Just asked him and he can't even remember these occasions where his lack of foresight caused him to miss out on what he wanted.
It all comes back to the emotional realism of knowing that both your traumas and your delights are yours alone; other people don't care about them very much. Not even - and this is the tough part - your closest friends and family. The good news about this situation is that your own emotional reactions might not be so transcendent either. They fade with time and become less important than the experience you have in the present.
So when Marc got over his initial shock at his friends' fight he was still shocked and embarrassed and could no longer enjoy his 'special night'. With time he may learn that neither the aggression that provoked the fight nor his own shock and embarrassment need last longer than the moment they erupt in.
Anyway, Clancy, thanks again for a well crafted and thoughtful narrative that provokes some highly interesting thoughts. Linklater would be proud.