A Matter of Conviction

“So don’t look at it,” the other kid said. “If you don’t spring right, you can’t get to touch your toes. Sometimes, you get these boards where...”

“You wear them on all your pants?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, all my pants.”

“You change it from pants to pants?”

“Yeah, I change it from pants to pants.”

“That seems pretty stupid. It looks pretty stupid, too, you want to know the truth.”

“So don’t look at it,” Hank said, repeating the other kid.

“Well, I don’t like it. That’s all. I don’t like it.”

“Well, who cares what you like? It’s my pants, and it’s my lock. So if you don’t like it, who cares? I don’t care.” He was beginning to feel a little frightened. Bobby was much bigger than he, and he didn’t want to start a fight with a boy who could kill him. He wished desperately that Bobby would let go of the conversation. But Bobby wasn’t in a mood to let go of anything. Bobby was having a real good time.

“Whyn’t you put the lock on your shirt, too?”

“I don’t want no lock on my shirt.”

“Whyn’t you put it on your underwear?”

“Whyn’t you shut up?” Hank said. He was beginning to tremble. I’m not afraid, he told himself.

“Whyn’t you stick it on your pecker?”

“Oh, come on,” Hank said. “Shut up, willya?”

“What’s the matter? You nervous about your damn lock?”

“I ain’t nervous at all. I just don’t want to talk about it. You mind?”

“I want to talk about it,” Bobby said. “Let’s see that damn lock, anyway.” He leaned over and stretched out his hand, ready to touch the lock, ready to have a closer look at it. Hank backed away a little.

“Keep your hands off it!” he said, and he wondered in that moment why this had to be, why he couldn’t be left alone, and he felt the trembling inside him, and again he told himself, I’m not afraid, knowing that he was afraid, and hating the fear, and hating Bobby, and watching the older boy’s face break into a malicious grin.

“What’s the matter? I can’t touch it even?”

“No, you can’t touch it,” he said. Come on, stop it, he thought. What do we have to fight for? Come on.

“What’s the matter? It’s gold?”

“Yeah, it’s platinum. Keep your hands off it.”

“I only wanted to look at it.”

“You said you didn’t like to look at it. So keep your hands off it. Go look someplace else. Go look around the corner, why don’t you?”

The lock hung from the trouser loop, steel and fabric wedded together. Bobby glanced at it. And suddenly he reached out for it, grasping the lock and pulling it, ripping the trouser loop, clutching the lock in his closed fist. Hank was too shocked to move for an instant. Bobby was grinning. Hank hesitated. The gauntlet had been dropped. Trembling, fighting to keep the tears from his eyes, he got to his feet.

“Give me the lock,” he said.

Bobby stood up. He was at least a head taller than Hank, and easily twice as wide. “What’s the matter?” he asked innocently.

“Give me that lock!”

“I think I’ll throw it down the sewer with the rest of the crap,” Bobby said, and he took a step toward the gutter, not realizing that for all intents and purposes he was holding Hank’s heart clutched in his fist, was holding an identity, an existence, a life in his fingers. He had reasoned correctly that Hank was afraid of him. He could see fear in Hank’s narrow, trembling body, could read it in the tightly controlled face, the eyes moist and refusing to succumb to the onslaught of tears. But he did not know he was holding something precious in his hand, something that gave meaning and reality in a concrete and asphalt maze that threatened anonymity. He did not know until Hank hit him.

He hit Bobby quite hard, so hard that Bobby’s nose began to bleed instantly. Bobby felt the blood gushing from his nostrils, and his eyes went wide with surprise. Hank hit him again, and then again, and Bobby kept trying to feel his nose while he was being hit, and suddenly he was falling to the hot pavement, and Hank was straddling him, and he felt fingers around his throat, wildly clutching at his windpipe, and he recognized in a moment of terrifying awareness that Hank would choke him to death.

“Give him the lock, Bobby,” one of the other kids said, and Bobby — twisting his head, trying to escape the viselike fingers around his throat — sputtered, “Take it, here, take it!”

He opened his fist and the lock dropped to the sidewalk. Hank picked it up quickly. He held the lock clenched in one fist, the other hand closed over it, and the tears finally reached his eyes, spilled down his face. Stuttering, he said, “Why why why c-c-c-couldn’t you m-m-mind your own b-b-business?”

“Go home, Bobby,” one of the other kids said. “Your goddamn nose is all bloody.”

That was the end of the fight, and the last of the trouble he was to have with Bobby. He stopped wearing the lock immediately afterward. He wore something else from that day on: a recognition of his own fear and the lengths to which he would go to keep it from erupting.

“Dad?”