Page 151 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 139

straddling my chest, all of us screaming like Indians with laughter,
leaping up, heading back through the woods to the school, laughing,
running, the three of us almost hysterical with excitement, singing,
“Cheer, boys, cheer! Old Misery’s burning down! Cheer, boys, cheer!
It’s burning to the ground. The faculty will be run out of town.
There’ll be a hot time in the old Mis tonight!”
Hank the Tank was in a small basement room lifting a set of bar-
bells and dumb bells Dryden had donated. We stopped at the door,
still laughing, to make fun of Tank, who was working at making
himself even bigger. Lock joked about how seminari ans weren’t sure
about their body image. Dryden had talked Gunn into designating
a special exercise room. Gunn at first protested such a gym would
be temptation to a worldly preoccu pa tion with the body, but Dryden
reminded him of the disciplined Marines and their stamina.
Gunn half-capitulated and assigned over part of a boiler room,
though he was by no means con vinced of this kind of a mens sana in
corpore sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body. Ever so often in assem-
bly he made uneasy mention that it was all right to care for the body,
but not to get all preoccu pied with it, and not to eat spices or a lot of
pepper, and not to look at it more than you had to for hygiene, and
always to be sure to sleep on your right side with your hands folded
across your breast so you wouldn’t feel your heart beating and start
thinking about blood and what it could do to a boy’s body.
“Hey, Tank,” Mike announced from the door, “we’re from the
Friends of the Friend less Friends Society and, we regret, we reject
you.”
“Drop dead,” Tank said. He chewed a wad of bubble gum like
chaw tobacco.
“Hey, Tank,” I said from the door, “how much do you weigh?”
“What’s it to you?” he asked. “You’re all covered with dirt.”
“The Tank used to be a two-hundred-pound weakling,” I said
to Mike, “and they kicked sand in his face at the beach. But they
don’t any more.”
“Why not?” Mike said.
“Why not?” I said. “They blacktopped the beach!” Ka-boom.
“Ain’t you guys funny as a rubber crutch,” Hank the Tank said.
He turned his fat back to us, pulled at his seat where his hacked-off

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