"Hi, Tom," Jack said, holding out his hand. "My name's Jack Burns. I'm from Toronto." That was being nice once, Jack was thinking, but he foresaw that the math could get confusing in a hurry. (Even when he was an adult, numbers would be his undoing.)
"Was that little fag with the blond beard your father?" Tom Abbott asked Jack.
"Actually, no. He's a friend of the family," Jack replied. "He's a former teacher of mine, my drama coach--a great guy." Jack turned to Noah and said: "Please help me keep count. I've been nice twice. That's it for nice." He walked past Tom Abbott, pushing open the curtain on his way into the hall.
"What did you say, faggot?" Abbott asked; he followed Jack into the corridor. "You think someone out here is going to help you?"
"I don't want any help," Jack told him. "Just an audience."
There was a kid who looked like another fifth grader; he was sitting on a steamer trunk in the hall. His roommate stood in the doorway to their room, holding the curtain open. "Hi, I'm Jack Burns--from Toronto," he told them. "There's probably going to be a fight, if you're interested." Jack kept his back turned to Tom Abbott, calling to a couple of boys down the hall. "Talk about derogatory! How about calling someone a 'kike'? How about 'faggot'? Doesn't that sound derogatory to you?"
Jack felt a hand on his shoulder; he knew it wasn't Noah's. When someone touched you from behind, there was usually a way they expected you to turn. Chenko had told Jack to turn the opposite way--it caught your opponent a little flat-footed. Jack turned the opposite way and stepped chest-to-chest with Tom Abbott, the top of Jack's head not quite touching Abbott's chin. Tom Abbott had four or five inches and about thirty or forty pounds on Jack, but Abbott was no wrestler; he leaned into Jack with all his weight.
Jack caught him with an arm-drag and Abbott dropped down on all fours; Jack drove Abbott's head to his knee and locked up the cross-face cradle. Tom Abbott wasn't a third as strong as Emma Oastler; at best, he was only two thirds as strong as Mrs. Machado. It was as tight a cradle as Jack had ever had on anyone before. Tom Abbott's nose was flat against his knee; he was breathing like he had a sinus problem. That was when Jack heard someone say, "That's a halfway decent cross-face cradle."
"What's wrong with it?" Jack asked. He couldn't see who'd spoken, but it had been an older boy's voice.
"I could show you how to make it tighter," the older boy told Jack. The surrounding faces of the kids seemed like fifth-grade faces. Jack had the feeling that the older boy was standing directly behind his head. Jack knew that Tom Abbott couldn't talk--Abbott could barely breathe. Jack just kept cranking the cradle as hard as he could; he waited. "You can let him up now," the boy with the older-sounding voice said.
"You shouldn't call people faggots or kikes," Jack said. "It's derogatory."
"Let him up," the older boy said. Jack let Tom Abbott go and got to his feet. "What are you doing in a fifth-grade dorm, Tom?"
Jack had a look at the older boy who was talking. Jack didn't yet know that the boy was the proctor on their floor, but it was evident he was a wrestler. He was no taller than five-eight or five-nine; by his build, he was in Emma's weight class or a little heavier. And while his cauliflower ears were mere trifles in comparison to Chenko's--they weren't even as bad as Pavel's or Boris's--you could tell he was proud of them.
Tom Abbott still wasn't talking. He seemed resigned to his fate--namely, that the proctor was going to show Jack how he might improve his cross-face cradle. "You want to see tighter?" the proctor asked Jack.
"Yes, please," Jack said.
The proctor put Tom Abbott in another cross-face cradle. He stuck one of his knees in Abbott's ribs, which had the effect of driving Tom's hips in a diagonally opposed direction from his head and neck. "Not only tighter but more uncomfortable," the proctor explained.
His name was Loomis--everyone called him by his last name. He was an eighth grader from Pennsylvania, and he'd been wrestling for ten years. Loomis had some kind of learning disability; he'd repeated both second and fourth grade. He was only a couple of years younger than Emma.
Jack didn't know that Redding had a wrestling team, but it made perfect sense at a school where character counted--where effort was regarded as more reliable than talent.
In Redding's point system, you lost a point for every derogatory or dismissive thing you said to another boy, and, like a profane word, every act of unkindness cost you as well. For example, Tom Abbott had three points against him--one for calling Noah a kike, another for calling Jack and Noah faggots, and a third for picking a fight with Jack. ("He touched me first," Jack told Loomis, who seemed unsurprised.)
Tom Abbott had another point against him for being an upperclassman in a fifth-grade dorm. You needed permission from the proctor on the floor to visit with a younger kid. You had a limit of four points against you per month. More than four and you were expelled--this was nonnegotiable. Tom Abbott had four points against him on the first day of school; he wouldn't last at Redding past the second week.
It was hard to come to Redding as an older boy. Abbott was a transfer student from another school. Kids admitted in grade five had a better chance of making it through grade eight. Loomis was a four-year boy, like most of the surviving eighth graders.
If you did the work--both your homework and your work-job, because everyone had a work-job at Redding--you were okay. And you had to treat the other kids respectfully; you had to be nice from the start, a tougher philosophy than being nice twice. Mrs. Wicksteed would have respected Redding.
Swearing was a half-point against you, a half-point for every word. For example, it was better to say "Fuck!" or "Shit!" than "Fucking shit!" (Emma would not have done well at Redding.)
They were not all boys with "problems," but they were all boys who were not welcome to live at home. Loomis's parents and older sister had been killed in an automobile accident; his grandparents had wanted him out of their house before the puberty business started.
"Fair enough," Loomis always said. That could have been a motto at Redding, too, though it wasn't as resonant as Labor omnia vincit.
In the wrestling room, Jack discovered another motto; it was printed on the ceiling, where you could read it only if you were being pinned.
NO WHINING
The academic expectations of the school were fairly modest; the homework was less demanding than it was repetitious. A lot of memorization, which was okay
with Jack. A duck-under, an arm-drag, an ankle-pick, an outside single-leg--as Chenko had taught the boy, these things were essentially undemanding, but they required repetition. Jack felt right at home at Redding.
And neither Miss Wurtz nor Mr. Ramsey would have questioned the value of memorization. At Redding, nothing was inspired--everything was a drill. Smart boys, not that there were many, lay low; hard work was all that mattered. The more you had to overcome, the better your efforts were appreciated.