It was Franny who protected me from Ralph. One day when we were watching them paint the yard-line stripes on the football field—just Franny and I; we were hiding from Frank (we were often hiding from Frank)—De Meo came up to us and pushed me into the blocking sled. He was wearing his scrimmage uniform: shit and death Number 19 (his age). He took his helmet off and spit his mouthpiece out across the cinder track, letting his teeth gleam at Franny. “Beat it,” he said to me, still looking at Franny. “I got to talk to your sister in the worst way.”
“You don’t have to push him,” Franny said.
“She’s only twelve,” I said.
“Beat it,” De Meo said.
“You don’t have to push him,” Franny told De Meo. “He’s only eleven.”
“I got to tell you how sorry I am,” De Meo said to her. “I won’t still be here by the time you’re a student. I’ll be graduated already.”
“What do you mean?” Franny said.
They’re going to take in girls,” De Meo said.
“I know,” Franny said. “So what?”
“So, it’s a pity, that’s all,” he told her, “that I won’t be here by the time you’re finally old enough.”
Franny shrugged; it was Mother’s shrug—independent and pretty. I picked De Meo’s mouthpiece up from the cinder track; it was slimy and gritty and I tossed it at him.
“Why don’t you put that back in your mouth?” I asked him. I could run fast, but I didn’t think I could run faster than Ralph De Meo.
“Beat it,” he said; he zipped the mouthpiece at my head, but I ducked. It sailed away somewhere.
“How come you’re not scrimmaging,” Franny asked him. Behind the grey wooden bleachers that passed for the Dairy School “stadium” was the practice field where we could hear the shoulder pads and helmets tapping.
“I got a groin injury,” De Meo told Franny. “Want to see it?”
“I hope it falls off,” I said.
“I can catch you, Johnny,” he said, still looking at Franny. Nobody called me “Johnny.”
“Not with a groin injury you can’t,” I said.
I was wrong; he caught me at the forty-yard line and pushed my face in the fresh lime painted on the field. He was kneeling on my back when I heard him exhale sharply and he slumped off me and lay on his side on the cinder track.
“Jesus,” he said, in a soft little voice. Franny had grabbed the tin cup in his jock strap and twisted its edges into his private parts, which is what we called them in those days.
We both could outrun him, then.
“How’d you know about it?” I asked her. “The thing in his jock strap? I mean, the cup.”
“He showed me, another time,” she said grimly.
We lay still in the pine needles in the deep woods behind the practice field; we could hear Coach Bob’s whistle and the contact, but we were hidden from all of them.
Franny never minded when Ralph De Meo beat up Frank, and I asked her why she minded when Ralph beat up me.
“You’re not Frank,” she whispered fiercely; she wet her skirt in the damp grass at the edge of the woods and wiped the lime off my face with it, rolling up the hem of her skirt so that her belly was bare. A pine needle stuck to her stomach and I picked it off for her.
“Thank you,” she said, intent on getting every last bit of the lime off me; she pulled her skirt up higher, spit in it, and kept wiping. My face stung.
“Why do we like each other more than we like Frank?” I asked her.
“We just do,” she said, “and we always will. Frank is weird,” she said.
“But he’s our brother,” I said.
“So? You’re my brother, too,” she said. “That’s not why I like you.”
“Why do you?” I asked.
“I just do,” she said. We wrestled for a while in the woods, until she got something in her eye; I helped her get it out. She was sweaty and smelled like clean dirt. She had very high breasts, which seemed separated by too wide an expanse of chest, but Franny was strong. She could usually beat me up, unless I got completely on top of her; then she could still tickle me hard enough to make me pee if I didn’t get off her. When she was on top of me, there was no moving her.
“One day I’ll be able to beat you up,” I told her.
“So what?” she said. “By then you won’t want to.”
A fat football player, named Poindexter, came into the woods to move his bowels. We saw him coming and hid in the ferns we’d known about for years. For years the football players crapped in these woods, just off the practice field—especially, it seemed, the fat ones. It was a long run back to the gymnasium, and Coach Bob harangued them for not emptying their bowels before they came to practice. For some reason the fat ones could never get them entirely empty, we imagined.
“It’s Poindexter,” I whispered.
“Of course it is,” Franny said.
Poindexter was very awkward; he always had trouble getting his thigh pads down. Once he had to take off his cleats and remove the entire bottom half of his uniform, except his socks. This time he just struggled with the pads and pants that bound his knees precariously close together. He kept his balance by squatting slightly forward with his hands on his helmet (on the ground in front of him). This time he crapped messily on the insides of his football shoes and had to wipe the shoes as well as his ass. For a moment, Franny and I feared he would use the ferns for this purpose, but Poindexter was always hurried and panting, and he did as good a job as he could with the handful of maple leaves he’d gathered on the path and brought into the woods with him. We heard Coach Bob’s whistle blowing, and Poindexter heard it, too.
When he ran back toward the practice field, Franny and I started clapping. When Poindexter stopped and listened, we stopped clapping; the poor fat boy stood in the woods, wondering what applause he had imagined—this time—and then rushed back to the game he played so badly and, usually, with such humiliation.
Then Franny and I snuck down to the path that the football players always took back to the gym. It was a narrow path, pockmarked from their cleats. We were slightly worried where De Meo might be, but I went up to the edge of the practice field and “spotted” for Franny while she dropped her pants and squatted on the path; then she spotted for me. We both covered our rather disappointing messes with a light sprinkling of leaves. Then we retreated to the usual ferns to wait for the football players to finish practice, but Lilly was already in the ferns.
“Go home,” Franny told her; Lilly was seven. Most of the time she was too young for Franny and me, but we were nice to her around the house; she had no friends, and she seemed entranced by Frank, who enjoyed babying her.
“I don’t have to go home,” Lilly said.
“Better go,” Franny said.
“Why’s your face so red?” Lilly asked me.
“De Meo put poison on it,” Franny said, “and he’s looking around for more people to rub it on.”
“If I go home, he’ll see me,” Lilly said seriously.
“Not if you go right away,” I said.
“We’ll watch out for you,” Franny said. She stood up out of the ferns. “It’s all clear,” she whispered. Lilly ran home.