My new classmates instructed me to steer clear of Big Bernie. Big Bernie’s man-hands, they said, were already legendary in the seventh grade for their ability to crush lunchboxes, facilitate apocalyptic wedgies and, in at least one case, box a set of ears with enough force to cause partial hearing loss.
“Y’all don’t even know,” said Robbie Ray while shaking Tabasco onto a gelatinous mound of refried beans and rice. I was new this dusty inferno they called Cuero, Texas; new to refried beans and hot sauce; new to people with two first names.
“Here he comes,” Robbie Ray said, and everyone put their heads down and dug into their meals.
“Well lookee here,” said Big Bernie. “We got us a Yankee yaggot in our mist.”
I had never met my father, but my mother, in a rare moment of lucidity, had once told me I had inherited the old man’s tongue, and that said tongue had a brain of its own—and a wicked little brain at that. What I said to Big Bernie was this:
“In our midst, you fat redneck.”
The subsequent reaction was unexpected. Not Big Bernie’s, mind you—his finger-wagging warning of after-school agony was as predictable as the stream of drugged-out losers through my mother’s bedroom—but from the six or seven others at the lunch table. My new kid’s heart dropped as one by one they lifted their trays and moved along, even though Big Bernie had come and gone. At first I thought my profanity had offended; only later did I come to learn the meaning—and pervasiveness—of redneck pride. It was a term of endearment to the natives, like it or not, and the last thing they wanted to hear was a Yankee using it in vain.
In the end, only Robbie Ray remained. He stared at me for a few moments and then returned to his meal, shaking his head.
“Not cool,” he mumbled. “Not cool t’all.”
Rather than endure further embarrassment on the bus, I decided to walk the two miles home. I kept lookout for Big Bernie until I got to the old elementary school and felt as though I would melt. Taking refuge in the shade under a set of bleachers, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and got to thinking how it was easily my first hundred-degree day seeing as how I had lived my whole life in Houghton, Michigan, which, if you didn’t know, is way up in the Upper Peninsula, and the hottest it ever gets in Houghton is eighty degrees and that’s only for a few days in July or August, and even then only in certain years.
Suddenly my hand caught fire on the metal bleachers and I shook it and slapped at it and tried to stand up and banged my head.
Stumbling and cursing around the weedy ball field, I flicked the tiny red devils off my wrist and flapped my arms for good measure. This is when I spotted Big Bernie approaching from home plate. It wasn’t my first encounter with fire ants, and it wouldn’t be my last, but in time I’d learn to stay out of their path. I can’t say the same about Big Bernie.“Ho doggie!” he howled.
I got moving. No way fat boy’s catching me, I thought, but then he started to run, and fast, massive legs churning like blubber-filled pistons, and within two blocks he had halved the distance between us. I cut through a yard and vaulted a family of wooden armadillos and came out in the alley, which was nothing more than a two-track running between the clapboard houses and tin trailers. Dogs were barking—dogs always seemed to be barking in Cuero, Texas—and I looked back and saw Big Bernie was now disturbingly close and, worse yet, clutching a pair of classroom scissors.
“Help me.” I tried to yell, but it came out as a noiseless plea to no one.
“Gonna cut that yaggot hair,” said Big Bernie, by no means breathless.
I’d always been an excitable kid, quick to tears, and they flowed now as my legs betrayed me and the gruesome images took over. There was Big Bernie hacking away gleefully—first my hair, then my ears, then the soft meat of my eyeballs—and the fear was a sudden balloon in my chest and I knew for certain that I would die in this alley in bumlick Texas and I managed a short but powerful girl-scream as his fingertips brushed my neck and I smelled the enchiladas rancid on his breath and I gagged a bit as I was lifted from the ground—more like propelled—yet it was me doing it, only without any semblance of control, and I smacked head-first into the trunk of a live oak, coming to a rest on a pair of branches, belly down, four or five feet above Big Bernie.
He looked up, mouth open. Then he proceeded to jump up and down, arms raised, but to no avail.
“Git down here,” is what I heard, and I opened my mouth and puked on Big Bernie’s head.
He went absolutely freak-show at this point, ranting about my destruction while palming vomit from his hair and flinging it up at me. The hubbub had captured the attention of an old woman, who opened the back door of her trailer and peered out across her backyard.
“What you lookin at!” shouted Big Bernie, and the woman ducked back inside and closed the door.
I don’t know if she had seen me fly, but at the time I couldn’t care less: my head hurt so bad I could think of nothing else. It seems logical to blame the pain on the collision, but the truth is the art of flying comes with certain consequences, chief among them a piercing migraine that subsides only after several hours of slumber. And so that’s what I did, passed out right there on the scraggly tree even as Big Bernie Madigan, bully extraordinaire, promised in no uncertain terms to make the remainder of my school year a living hell, all the while shaking his man-hands like vomit-smeared sledgehammers.
Andy Henion lives in a cold but beautiful place with three females, eight legs between them. A former newspaper reporter, he has published dozens of stories in print and online publications including Spork, Hobart, Pindeldyboz and Monkeybicycle. He's been nominated for a Pushcart and a Million Writer's, and shortlisted for a Derringer.