the scent that drew them. It was our faces, and our movements in the world: as much as we tried to walk, and sit, and talk with confidence, we were transparent. And if our motions and voices did not betray us, our lips and eyes did: they showed the discerning eye of bullies what a wiser person, perhaps an older girl, may have recognized as the roots of vanity. What the bullies saw in our faces was fear; not fear of physical injury, as we believed then, but of humiliation, not only from the fists of a bully, but in all the forms it took in our boyhoods: public mistakes in the classroom or athletic field; not on written examinations, but mistakes our classmates could see. The bullies chose us over other boys who were as small, because a bullyâs distorted focus is, like any pervertâs, out of proportion. The bully saw in us not the whole boy our friends saw, but that fulfillment of his need: boys who would bear anything from him with no resistance at all, save hiding or running away.
My sons and I realize now that bullies never fought. In a classroom of boys from the first through the twelfth grades, there are usually some fighters. They are not bullies. They are easily provoked and at once become motion, action. The ones I knew were good company, most of them athletes, and I respected them and warmly drew safety from being with them. They walked on a different earth than the bullies did: we were in the same classrooms, and on the same playgrounds at recess and at athletic hour, but the fighters and bullies moved about, oblivious of each other, like wild animals at an African watering hole when the predators are not hungry.
When the fighters were nearby we were safe, for the bullies retreated into their strange â and estranged â dark selves. Once, when I was a boy, some of us promoted a fight between our bully and one of the classroom fighters, who also fought in the boxing ring. I do not recall how we did this, but since we were cowards we probably used lies, whispered into the fighterâs ear that the bully had said this, and that, and so forth. After school we gathered behind a canebrake: three or four Iagos and the two boys we used, and I imagine my comrades in cowardice felt the same cool shiver of self-hatred that I did, the same glimmer of recognition: that now we were the bullies, hoping for catharsis through the body and â we did not know it â the spirit of our boxer. The bully did not fight. He took the pre-fight abuse that boys use to increase their adrenaline until they can throw a punch, indeed cannot do anything but throw a punch: the bully took shoves and insults, and retreated and denied the reason for a fight, and so denied us. He was a dark-skinned Cajun boy, and in the new pallor of his face I saw my own fears. And still was too young to know the meaning of that pale and frightened face.
Our fighter was bigger than the bully, and I thought again it was all a matter of size, and hated my lack of it, and walked home from school with that self-pity steeped in remorse that rose from a sin I could not name. The bully was, in fact, as small as I was; our only differences were his muscles, and my soft arms and cowardice. And the cowardice was not, as I believed, physical: it was broader and deeper than that, and touched nearly all my public actions. Its source was a frightened absorption with myself that spawned pride and vanity as often as cowardice: the Aâs in school, the fluent and falsely humble answers in the classroom, the virtuous and solemn face returning from the Communion rail to the pew, where I kneeled and bowed my head and closed my eyes and, as the Host dissolved on my tongue, I prayed with the fervor of the painted profile of Christ kneeling before a large stone in the Garden of Olives, asking that His cup be lifted. Kneeled and prayed that way for anyone to see, and I believed that everyone but those kneeling in front of me saw, and that was the source of my
My sons and I realize now that bullies never fought. In a classroom of boys from the first through the twelfth grades, there are usually some fighters. They are not bullies. They are easily provoked and at once become motion, action. The ones I knew were good company, most of them athletes, and I respected them and warmly drew safety from being with them. They walked on a different earth than the bullies did: we were in the same classrooms, and on the same playgrounds at recess and at athletic hour, but the fighters and bullies moved about, oblivious of each other, like wild animals at an African watering hole when the predators are not hungry.
When the fighters were nearby we were safe, for the bullies retreated into their strange â and estranged â dark selves. Once, when I was a boy, some of us promoted a fight between our bully and one of the classroom fighters, who also fought in the boxing ring. I do not recall how we did this, but since we were cowards we probably used lies, whispered into the fighterâs ear that the bully had said this, and that, and so forth. After school we gathered behind a canebrake: three or four Iagos and the two boys we used, and I imagine my comrades in cowardice felt the same cool shiver of self-hatred that I did, the same glimmer of recognition: that now we were the bullies, hoping for catharsis through the body and â we did not know it â the spirit of our boxer. The bully did not fight. He took the pre-fight abuse that boys use to increase their adrenaline until they can throw a punch, indeed cannot do anything but throw a punch: the bully took shoves and insults, and retreated and denied the reason for a fight, and so denied us. He was a dark-skinned Cajun boy, and in the new pallor of his face I saw my own fears. And still was too young to know the meaning of that pale and frightened face.
Our fighter was bigger than the bully, and I thought again it was all a matter of size, and hated my lack of it, and walked home from school with that self-pity steeped in remorse that rose from a sin I could not name. The bully was, in fact, as small as I was; our only differences were his muscles, and my soft arms and cowardice. And the cowardice was not, as I believed, physical: it was broader and deeper than that, and touched nearly all my public actions. Its source was a frightened absorption with myself that spawned pride and vanity as often as cowardice: the Aâs in school, the fluent and falsely humble answers in the classroom, the virtuous and solemn face returning from the Communion rail to the pew, where I kneeled and bowed my head and closed my eyes and, as the Host dissolved on my tongue, I prayed with the fervor of the painted profile of Christ kneeling before a large stone in the Garden of Olives, asking that His cup be lifted. Kneeled and prayed that way for anyone to see, and I believed that everyone but those kneeling in front of me saw, and that was the source of my
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