Bennett The Brave

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

In the winter, the long walk from my house, out to the road to catch the bus, could be challenging. In addition to the darkness of the early morning, sometimes I'd have to bring a shovel with me to dig past the snow the plows had piled into the driveway as they passed. January and February seemed to always bring so much snow that the roads became dirty, white labyrinths. High embankments, combined with drifts from the driving, cold wind, sometimes made for interesting navigation. The ancient bus that took me to the school didn't have a very good heater, so when I headed off in the morning, I was always layered-up under my winter ducks, pulling down the earlaps on my hat to cover my tender ears. The twenty or so children on my route always arrived ruddy-faced, chapped-cheek, and eager to scamper into the warm embrace of the monolithic school building with its monstrous, coal-fired furnaces.

"So, Bennett," Lizzie-B hung an arm over her seat and looked back at me, "I heard Garrett is awake and gonna be okay."

"Yeah," I said, over the cranky din of the bus, "My dad told me his parents called, and said he woke up a couple of days ago and it seems like he's got all his marbles and stuff, but he doesn't remember much about what happened." She nodded. I hoped the news of Garrett's impending recovery would be the end of all the rumors about the cause of his accident. In the days after the holidays, the gossip-mill regarding Garrett and his accident, ran to full capacity, churning out wild stories that ran the gamut from the plausible on the one hand, to things my father described as "balls-out-crazy", on the other. Most of the looniest ones, I heard only third-hand, from Lizzie-B, or other friends. For some reason, nobody really spoke to me directly about it.

"Cool," Lizzie said with a thumbs-up, "I can't wait to see him and give him a hug." Me too, I thought to myself as I nodded to her, me too.

There seemed to be an undercurrent about the subject of Garrett, which I couldn't quite get my arms around. My gut told me something was up, but I could not figure what. Mayebe because it seemed like some conversations came to stop when I turned a corner or showed up in a classroom, or perhaps because I kept catching people looking at me and then glancing away. Everyone seemed to have a question on their lips, but never dared ask it.

I've always felt like a pretty normal guy, I have plenty of friends, I'm not one of those strange, withdrawn loners that every school seems to have. I do good at winter sports, I love to swim, run, jump and climb in the summers at the lake, and I try to be like Pastor Dave and my Dad, nice to everybody. There is this one older guy though, for some reason, who never liked me. I couldn't tell you why, because I never did anything to him. His name was Peter Gilbert and he was a Junior, same class as Garrett. From the start, he regarded me with nothing but derision and bile.

Mom is always saying stuff like "you can't please everyone" or "you can't make everybody like you", but I found Peter's attitude toward me genuinely puzzling. To my knowledge, I never did or said anything to draw his ire, so I had no idea why he disliked me so much. I tried avoiding him as much as possible, a fact that did not escape his notice.

"Whassamatter Red," he would sneer, "you afraid of me?"

First off, it is no secret how much I dislike being called anything but "Bennett". Being referred to as "Red", however, really sets my teeth on edge. Peter spoke the appellation like one might talk of a something he'd stepped in, and I resented how it made me feel. I wasn't afraid, exactly, just confused. Peter's little circle of cronies shared in his disdain for Middle school kids in general and me in particular, so I was careful to avoid being caught alone when they were about.

For the most part, high-schoolers were segregated from us junior high kids. Unfortunately, the schedule for my Phys-Ed class meant that we were getting out of the showers just about the time Peter and his cohorts were coming in to the locker room for their class. This, of course, provided no end of opportunities for Peter and company to belittle and haze us eighth-graders. On a good day I could hope, Mayebe, to quickly shower, towel off and change back into my school clothes unmolested. Otherwise it was classic maneuvers like the ever popular atomic-wedgie, hiding of one's clothes, jock-strap "oxygen mask" treatments and all conceivable manner of adolescent humiliations. The onset of puberty and it's attendant changes meant my classmates and I were awkward enough around each other; adding Peter and his goons to the mix made the situation almost intolerable.