Speaking for men who are drawn to violence, Ed Harkness writes compellingly on “why we love the vein of coal /inside us” in this recollection of a harrowing bullying episode.
—
Confession
My heart had never rattled its prison bars
as madly as it did that day. School out,
half past three, the agreed-upon time
to gather in a neighbor’s yard across the street.
We formed a loose ring on a dog-rutted
clump of grass. I stood back a bit — I,
so small I fit, when ear-slapped and shoved,
snugly in my locker, and more than once —
I stood back and watched Vinnie Petrocelli
beat Jake Medved into a whimpering doll
of dog shit, dirt and blood.
I liked it. The gashed brows, the crazed eyes,
their neck veins like pencils under the skin.
I liked my own fists, punching the face
of my palms again and again like pistons.
I hated liking it, hated seeing Medved,
the smaller broader boy — played left tackle,
framed like a Chrysler fender — wither
as he did against the leaner Vinnie,
whose arms had reach Jake would never match.
I liked that the brawlers were spastic,
bouncing and thrashing as salmon did,
netted and dropped on the boat’s floorboards,
flopping out their lives.
Such appalling joy I felt, such self-loathing.
Years later I came to believe what I’d seen
was what men have always loved. Hurt.
The need to teach the bully a lesson,
to come up with reasons for a fist
to smash another man or country
in the face and see hair groomed with blood
or cities reduced to righteous rubble.
I remember Vinnie as quiet, smart,
good in biology. Even then
he looked like Alan Ladd in Shane. Later,
so I heard, he degreed in comparative lit.
That summer, he fell from El Capitan.
A piton failed. He fell, I heard, a mile.
Medved dropped out of high school, married
a teacher, became a Costco manager.
Who knows why we love the vein of coal
inside us, its cave exhaling the acrid
air of fear. All I know is what I heard
amid the jostling and shouts of boys my age.
There were girls in our eager audience.
Several walked away pale, speechless,
sensing they had just seen the future.
What I saw—still see—are Medved’s busted lips,
bloody teeth. When at last his eyes fluttered,
when his jaw moved at last, when, elbowed
on the torn ground he raised a hand to Vinnie—
now some minutes gone with his swollen knuckles—
when at last there fell the silence of defeat,
silence no one there that day would unsolemnize,
I moved between the bigger boys to stare
and hear Medved’s whispered resignation:
Okay, he said. Okay. Okay.
***
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