Read Online Battle Fatigue by Mark Kurlansky - Free Book Online Page B

Tony,” I say, “it’s really cold outside. Why don’t we put this off until spring? Baseball season.”
    Scaratini’s lip curls when he sneers. It is the sort of thing you can’t fake. Only genuinely mean people can curl their lips like that. All he says is, “Be there. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
    There is no backing out. By this point, everyone knows that we are fighting after school. I’ve never understood how it works, but news of a fight travels very quickly. Already several people have come up to me to offer support. Donnie says, “Show him what you’ve got, Joel.” Nobody really likes Tony. Maybe that’s what makes him so mean. Besides, most of the kids are certain that, as the saying goes, I can take him. I may be the only one who doubts it. And Tony, I guess. Everyone else reasons that I am now the better baseball player, a varsity-letter winner, so I can take him. That is the whole problem: I got the letter instead of him. In fact, I realize now that I may have provoked this whole thing by wearing my letter. My parents had bought me the cream-colored cardigan, the stadium sweater that all letter holders wear, for my birthday, and my mother sewed the letter on and I had worn it to school for the first time the day before. Was that what provoked him?
    Whatever the consequences of fighting him, they would be better than the consequences of not fighting him. With the whole school knowing about the fight, there is no way out. Even if a few people don’t know, as soon as the two fighters face each other on the field, kids will run through the school yard shouting, “Fight! Fight!” Most of the boys stand around in a circle, cheering. Kids like to see a good fight.
    The girls, of course, don’t come, and I don’t know what they think about fighting. It is one of the mysteries about girls. They often express contempt for boys fighting. But if you don’t fight, if you back away from a fight, there is probably not one girl in the whole school who will ever talk to you again.
    No, whatever happens, it will be better than not fighting.
    Rocco Pizzutti comes up to me in science lab and whispers, “Let me take the jerk for you, Joel.”
    Rocco owes me because I decerebrated his frog for him. This is a really weird thing. It is supposed to teach you how the brain works. You place a scissors blade inside the mouth of a live frog and cut, snipping off part of the frog’s head. Then you watch the thing hop around with its head chopped to note how differently it acts with a piece of its brain, the cerebrum, missing. Who wouldn’t act differently?
    Weird! Who thought up that one? Tony Scaratini?
    Anyway, Rocco Pizzutti, for all his toughness, can’t do it. He holds the frog firmly so that it can’t jump around, placing the scissors blade sideways in the frog’s mouth. He starts to squeeze the scissors and he feels the little body in his hand tense up. He can’t do it. It’s because he doesn’t do it quickly enough.
    And you have to do it. Mrs. George, who has long, bright red fingernails that look like she has been using them for decerebrations, makes it clear that “everyone must decerebrate” at least one frog. So I do Rocco’s and quickly hand it to him and he stands there holding the animal with the chopped head, looking sick.
    â€œPut it down, Rocky,” says Mrs. George, who knows her science but can never get Rocco’s name right. “See if it will jump.”
    â€œIt’s too late for that,” says Rocco sadly.
    He is grateful that I have done it. But I can’t let him fight Tony for me, much as I would love to see Scaratini trying to sidestep Rocco’s murderous left.
    â€œNo thanks, Rocco,” I whisper. “If I did that, every bully in the school would challenge me just to see me back down so he could feel big.”
    â€œI’d take them on too.