Inside the Mascot

The inside of the Otter head smelled like old rubber gloves and puke.   I set it on top of my knapsack on the seat next to me as the Number 21 bus crawled through the ‘burbs.  Mothers walked their children to the nearby public school, scolding them away from piles of fallen leaves. I looked at Jacob, but he wasn’t looking back.

It was the fall of 10^th grade.  Jacob Grant was my best friend then.  I know it was the fall of 10^th grade because that was when Jacob’s Gramms went into the nursing home and Jacob ended up on our couch for several weeks.  You remember things like that in a way that makes them more definitive than a calendar or pictures of Thanksgiving dinner, 1985. 

Jacob was a good kid, at least as far as you could know that about anyone.  He was the kind of kid that your parents liked and asked about when they hadn’t seen him for a while, hopeful you hadn’t abandoned the friendship in the fickleness of youth.  That’s how I remembered him when he showed up for school that fall.  Only there was something about him that hadn’t been there before.  He wore it like a bruise, just visible at the edge of a sleeve.  I started to doubt he was the good kid any more as days went on.

Jacob had taken up swearing like a biker, not just the routine profanity of adolescence but real crude talk that would get you kicked out of a shopping mall.  At the same time, he’d adopted a filthy laugh that he never had before.  He started pushing his hair to the side, out of his eyes, instead of getting it cut.  I couldn’t say whether these were habits he acquired over the summer, or something that was developing in front of my eyes, like a very slow Polaroid picture. 

Sitting across from him on the bus, I noticed that his jeans were ripped above the knee.  I figured that mom hadn’t seen him before he left the house that morning.  If she had, she would’ve marched him back upstairs to find a pair of pants that didn’t suit a hobo.  Since he moved in with a hockey bag of his belongings, mom had gone out of her way to treat him like her own son.  She made his lunches, cutting the crusts from his sandwiches the way he liked.  She washed his clothes, ensuring that he was as presentable as possible.  At night, she would have loud conversations with my father – discussions that I was not supposed to hear through the hastily closed door of their bedroom – so I knew that she felt compelled to look after him in ways my father couldn’t understand or tolerate. 

I walked into the living room one day when Jacob was watching TV.  Mom was standing behind him.  Her hand hung in the air just above his head, as if she were about to stroke his hair.  When she realized I was there, she took her hand back and asked me if I wanted something to eat.  The image lasted with me.  Having seen my current wife take in a malnourished cat, I now understand that my mother was acting on an instinct even she couldn’t explain.

As I sat looking at him across the aisle, Jacob unfolded his jack-knife and stuck it into the seat cushion next to him, stabbing and twisting. There was less stuffing in the seat than you’d expect.  He worked the blade like he was prying open clams or trying to work a lock, but not having much success.  He didn’t look up or catch my eye.

“Jacob,” I hissed, and he looked at me finally.  He placed a finger to his lips.

Jacob scrunched up his mouth and nose into a sort of duck-face with the effort of cutting through the thick vinyl of the bus seat.  Finally, it surrendered with a horrible shredding sound. 

The bus pulled over to the curb and stopped.  The driver turned in his seat and I got a look at his eyes in the big mirror as he searched for the source of the ripping sound.  I lowered my head.  In my mind, at his size it would take 13 strides to reach the back of the bus. Maybe 12.  Jacob flipped the blade of the knife closed inside his palm and slipped it into his pocket. 

Nine, ten, eleven. Eleven-and-one-half paces brought him to a spot directly in front of Jacob. 

My mind leapt to the reckoning:  my parents called to deal with the police and the transit people, and Jacob saying nothing to help his cause.  Me with nothing to say at all, since I couldn’t make out what would inspire someone to attack a bus seat that way.  It would come down on me by extension, I was certain, as things that your friends do always follow you home.  Guilt by association, they call it.  I felt myself shrivelling.  The driver stuck out his hand in front of Jacob, palm up.  Jacob just looked at his hand, following the curve of his meaty arm up to the shoulder, the driver’s face. 

I looked to the front of the bus.  A 30-something woman held the tiny hand of a very young child, who stared back.  My view of the bus started stretching out, as if the vehicle were elongating.  I was at the wrong end of a telescope, getting smaller and further away.  The image of the bus driver started to wobble, and then vibrate.  I could taste breakfast pushing up the back of my throat.  My legs made their own decisions.  Their certainty started to spread to my basal brain.

I stood and picked up the Otter head.  I couldn’t carry it and the book bag, not the 10 blocks to school.  I held it under one arm for a moment, while I pulled the straps of the backpack over my shoulders.  The bus wasn’t moving, but my knees and stomach were swaying.  The coward’s certainty was waning.

“Excuse me,” I whispered as I tried to move past the driver.  His bulk filled the aisle, blocking the long tunnel that led to the front door of the bus.  He didn’t seem to hear me.  His hand still stuck out in Jacob’s direction, demanding.  “Excuse me,” I said again, slightly louder, “may I get past?”

The driver wheeled and looked at me for the first time.  “Are you with him?” 

Almost twenty-five years later, I wrestled with this question when my first wife, Marg, asked me virtually the same thing.  It was over dinner one night, when we were into it over my mother’s refusal to come live with us after my father passed suddenly.  Marg was hurt by some things my mother had said.  Untrue, but hurtful things that people say when they’re looking for someone to share some of their pain.  My then-wife looked at me over the bowl of potato salad. 

She said, “I need to know if you’re with me or if you’re with her?”  She said that and then she waited for an answer.  I stopped cutting my steak and looked across at her, the fork still in my hand, unable to answer.  Incapable of taking a side.  The question hung over the marriage for a couple of years like a wobbling tight-rope walker, before it inevitably lost its balance and fell over.

That day on the bus was the same and I could read the impatience in the driver’s face.  He waited for an answer a moment or two longer, but no response was coming.  He turned his attention back to Jacob, without moving out of the way.

Jacob studied his fingernails.  I thought about whether the driver would call the cops, and whether Amy would ever come to my house again if Jacob got sent away.  I wondered whether I could outrun the driver if I pushed him and made a run for it.  A million swear words riffled through my head – things I could say to blow up the moment and distract the driver.  Nothing fit.  My calculations did not factor in what would become of Jacob.

Jacob’s gaze never left his lap.  He’d made his choice, I assumed, or a choice had been made, in any event, from which there was no retreat.  Either way.

I sat down.  The books in my knapsack bit into my back.  The driver’s hand remained, stuck out like a sort of fixture. 

He said, “son, just give it up already.”  Then, in a slightly gentler tone, he said, “you’re not fooling anyone.”

Jacob looked up then.  As if emerging from a dream, he saw the driver and the panic in my face.  He reached into his pocket, and for an instant I imagined him pulling out the knife and stabbing the driver, repeatedly, in the hand and then the chest.  He had the look of being adrift.  Dazed and at sea.  Like someone you might step over on the street, making crazy sounds.  Someone who might who do anything at that very moment.

Instead, he placed the folded-up knife in the driver’s palm, which immediately closed on it.  The driver said, “that’s right, son.”  He walked the 11 ½ strides to the front of the bus. 

Over his shoulder, he spoke to us.  “I believe this is your stop, gentlemen.”  The driver sat down, and the rear doors popped open as he pushed a lever. 

I looked at Jacob.  He wasn’t moving, but I could see him shaking off the last of the trance.  He’d need to be awake – it was about 10 blocks to school.  I’d have to run to make the first-period pep rally.
I said, “c’mon, let’s go.”

Jacob found his legs.  We stood at the same time, and I could see he was wobbling.  I put out a hand to take his elbow.  I thought he might brush it away, but he didn’t.

Jacob said, “I’m ok.  You go ahead.”  I released his arm and let myself down the back steps of the bus.

Jacob walked to the front.  He leaned over to the driver, holding onto the fare box to steady himself.  I walked along the side of the bus, meeting him at the front door.  I wanted to know what he said, but I didn’t have a voice or the words to ask.

Jacob descended from the bus and started walking in the direction of the school.  I fell in behind him.

I put on the stinking mascot head.  I didn’t want him to see me crying.