That night David appeared to him in a dream.
David was in a small rowboat that was tied to a dock. Rough waters rocked the
boat, slamming it against the wooden decking. David was wearing the yellow rain
slicker with matching hat that he had worn to school one rainy day. It had been
an unfortunate fashion choice, and he never wore it again. David was beckoning
for Foy to join him. Foy wanted to jump into the boat, but he was too
frightened. He got to his knees, turned around and managed to lower one foot to
the edge of the boat before he was frozen with fear, unable to enter the boat or
stand up again on the dock.
In the weeks following the unpleasant events in
the hall, Foy avoided David Friedman. He tried never to make eye contact and
walked quickly past him whenever he saw him in the halls. David’s presence felt
unpleasant, and those feelings slowly made him callous to David’s situation. He
couldn’t have put this into words, but an unconscious part of him felt that
David must be at fault. He must be bringing this on himself somehow.
“He should just act right,” Foy said to Kirk,
one of the boys in his friendship pod. They were at lunch and Foy was watching
David eating alone at a table near the corner. “You know what I mean? Be cool.
Just…I don’t know, stop running around the halls and making all that noise and
crying and all that. He’s just drawing attention to himself.”
Kirk nodded as he sucked on the straw sticking
out of his milk carton. He continued sucking until there was a slurping sound.
He then proceeded to push the straw around the bottom of the carton, vacuuming
up every last drop of milk.
“Yeah, he’s a dumbass,” Kirk said,
absentmindedly. “Can I have the rest of your ketchup?”
Foy continued to watch David across the
cafeteria. “Yeah, go ahead.” He pushed his empty tray across the table to Kirk,
who began mopping up the last of the ketchup with his index finger and licking
it clean.
“That’s not what I meant. I mean, yeah, he’s a
dumbass and everything, but I just think there’s things he could do to stop it.
You know, just be quieter or stay more out of the way or something.”
“Lomax hates him,” observed Kirk. “Kaiser too
and also even Clifford Delvin. Everyone hates him. He’s a complete doofus. He’s
a dork.”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Foy. He shook his head
quickly, as if to clear thoughts of David out of his mind. The two of them went
outside to play tetherball until the lunch period was over.
****
Several days later Foy stayed after school to
work on a project for history. He was heading toward the bike racks at the back
of the school when he came across David, who was sitting at one of the tables in
the outside snack area. Foy looked around. No one else was there. He walked over
to the table where David was fiddling with a metal index card box.
“Hi David!” said Foy with far too much
enthusiasm, as though he could wipe away the misery of David’s life with one
cheery encounter.
“Hi,” said David without looking up.
Foy took a long, deliberate look around, then
sat down at the table.
“What’s the little box for?”
David didn’t lift his eyes from the index cards
he was shuffling in and out of the metal box. He blurted out a string of words
without pausing or taking a breath.
“I’m starting a chess club we’re going to meet
every week to practice and talk about chess and we’re even going to some
tournaments if I can find any around here or anything.”
Foy looked into the little metal box, which was
open and sitting on David’s lap. It had tabbed dividers in it so that the
members of the chess club could be filed alphabetically. David’s unbelievable
optimism amazed Foy. He still didn’t get it. No one was going to be in his chess
club. Not one kid in the school.
The pathetic scene of this lonely boy with his
index cards and hope for a chess club was more than Foy could stand. He spoke up
impulsively.
“I’ll be in your chess club. Sign me up.”
David’s head snapped upward, his face glowing
with excitement. He began chattering about chess and strategy while he carefully
wrote “Davis, Foy” on a little card and printed Foy’s phone number neatly
beneath it.
He looked at Foy seriously. “So, what would you
say your experience level is with chess?”
Foy’s father had bought him a small chess set a
few months before, and Foy had finally managed to learn the different moves of
all the pieces. He still had some trouble with the knights and sometimes moved
them one space too far. When he and his father played, there was no real
strategy involved. They treated the game like a more complicated version of
checkers. They both made terrible, blundering moves and spent the whole game
happily capturing each other’s pieces and pumping their fists in triumph.
“I don’t know. I guess kind of a beginner. Me
and my dad have been playing and stuff. I know all the pieces now. Well, the
horse ones I get kind of mixed-up on.”
“You mean the knights?”
Foy had a vague memory of his father calling
one of the pieces a knight when he first explained the game.
“Yeah, I know. It’s just my brother is kind of
small so we call them horses at our house. Just kidding around and stuff, cause
he’s a little kid.”
“Well, the knights can be a tricky, but they
are absolutely essential. They cover a lot of the board.”
Foy stared at David for a moment with his mouth
slightly open.
"Uh... yes they do. They cover the board."
David wrote “beginner” on Foy’s card and
dropped it neatly behind the D tab. He snapped the box shut.
“Our first meeting is this Saturday at the
library by the park. You know the one?”
Foy lived near the park and rode his bike to
the library fairly often. He nodded his head.
“Great! I’ll see you Saturday at ten o'clock
sharp.”
A car honked and Foy looked up to see a sedan
pull over to the curb. David gathered his books and ran to the car, sliding into
the front seat. As they drove away, Foy caught a glimpse of David opening the
metal box and holding it up toward his mother’s face.
****
Foy felt completely happy as he rode his bike
home that day. Being nice to other kids, especially the ones that no one liked,
was exactly the kind of thing that he knew made God and Jesus very happy up in
heaven. Foy imagined Jesus in a toga, slipping over to the throne of a Zeus-like
God and nudging him in the ribs. He could see Jesus whispering in God’s ear and
the two of them smiling and nodding in his direction. He had a lot of energy and
jumped several curbs with his bike, pulling hard on the handlebars and soaring
through the air before landing solidly on the tires. Moving felt good. Pulling
on the handlebars felt good. Firm rubber tires on the ground felt good too. It
was good to move and ride hard and be a good person and be a part of everything.
Foy paused, rising off the seat and coasting with his feet on the pedals for a
moment. Then he laughed out loud, ducked his head low to the handlebars and
pedaled ferociously toward home.
He was in a great mood all afternoon, but
around dinnertime a terrible thought came to his mind. What if David showed his
chess club box to someone at school? What if everyone found out that he was in
David's chess club? Foy didn’t need to work out the details of what would
happen. The social rules of his world existed in his gut now, at an instinctual
level. He knew that he had made a terrible blunder. He was filled with dread and
anxiety all evening and could hardly fall asleep that night. The next morning at
breakfast he was bouncing his knee so hard and fast under the table that his
mother had to tell him to stop fidgeting.
He walked through the doors of Edgewood Junior
High that morning flinching and prepared for the worst, but nothing happened.
The halls were filled with kids going here and there. No one said anything to
him. David waved at him in the hall after second period, but Foy pretended not
to see him. In English David had the metal box sitting on his desk. He turned
around, looked at Foy and patted it, nodding with enthusiasm. Foy flashed a
quick, half-hearted smile and ducked his head immediately, burying it behind a
book.
David made no effort to recruit anyone else for
the chess club and even stopped carrying the box around. By the end of the week
Foy had forgotten about the whole thing, so he was a bit surprised when David
came up to him after school and reminded him about the meeting the next day.
“See you tomorrow at ten,” he said.
Foy paused momentarily, but it seemed clear
that his chess club charity wasn’t going to have any ill effect on his own
delicate social standing at Edgewood. He nodded, waved cheerfully at David, and
went home.
Saturday morning Foy rose early, as was his
custom, to eat Poptarts and watch Bugs Bunny with his younger brother. They had
seen all the episodes dozens of times, but they continued to watch every
Saturday, their eyes glued to the screen, faces slack and attentive. During the
commercials Foy scanned the instructions that had come with the chess set his
father gave him. He repeated the rules for the movement of the knight to
himself.
“You can move two spaces, then one. Or you
can move one space, then two. Any direction. Two and one or one and two.
Two and one or one and two.”
About 9:30, Foy told his mother that he was
going to the library. He walked his bike from the backyard to the driveway,
mounted it, and pedaled two miles to the local library that was adjacent to the
park. The library was mostly empty except for a few kids in the children’s
section.
David was seated at a table by the juvenile
literature. His index card box was on the table along with a fully prepared
chess board. As Foy approached he noticed that David was studying the board
intensely and making notes on a small pad of paper.
“Hi,” said Foy cheerfully.
David was all business. He motioned for Foy to
take the seat across from him, giving Foy the white pieces. David made some
notation on Foy’s membership card and put it back into the metal box.
Foy tried to make small talk, but David was
interested in getting right to the subject of chess. He mentioned a few foreign
names that Foy had never heard and rattled on about various offensive and
defensive strategies. Foy nodded politely, hardly listening. Then David began to
talk about his vision for the chess club.
“At first you and I will practice together. As
others join, of course, we’ll include them in some kind of a rotation. We could
handicap the games as needed by removing pieces, but we’ll have to see how good
everyone is. Later we’ll organize a mock tournament to prepare ourselves for a
real one.”
Foy had a vague sense of discomfort. This chess
club thing was turning out to be a little more involved than he had realized. He
didn’t understand most of what David was saying, but he kept nodding in
agreement. After a few minutes his attention began to drift. He looked over
David’s shoulder at the front door of the library. David’s words became a buzz
in the background until David moved his hand, pulling Foy’s attention back to
him. He was motioning toward the board.
“Well, shall we?”
“Sure,” said Foy, turning his full attention to
the double row of white chess pieces before him.
After a few moments, David said, “Go ahead,
white has the honor of the first move.”
Foy had no idea how to begin. With all of
David’s talk of strategy, he had begun to realize that chess could be a serious
affair.
“No, go ahead. You go first.”
David seemed okay with this. He carefully
turned the board around so that he had the white pieces. He moved the Queen’s
pawn ahead two spaces. Not wanting to make a silly or embarrassing move, Foy
copied David. He moved his queen’s pawn ahead two spaces as well, parking it
right in front of David’s pawn. David smiled and moved his queen’s bishop’s pawn
ahead two spaces.
“I offer you the Queen’s Gambit,” he said
seriously. “You have a choice to make. Will you accept, or no?”
It was now clear to Foy that he had greatly
underestimated the complexity of this game and David’s commitment to it. The
action seemed to be happening to the middle and right of the board. His eyes
drifted to the pawns over to the left. He grabbed one at random and slid it
forward slowly. He was going to move it two spaces forward, but he impulsively
stopped at one space. It seemed like a little variety might be a good thing.
David leaned over the board, squinting at Foy’s
pawn.
“What is that, some sort of Sicilian defense?”
At that moment Foy noticed some kids coming
into the library. To his horror he recognized Julie Paine and Roxanne Edwards.
Julie was regarded by most boys as the cutest girl in the entire 6th
grade, and Roxanne was her best friend. Julie’s status was completely above
everyone that Foy knew. He wouldn’t dare speak to her, though he had stared at
her from afar in wonder and amazement. She was so gorgeous that she was really
beyond desire or hope. Julie and Roxanne were chatting and laughing. Following
them into the library was a knot of 6 or 7 boys, all of them popular. Most were
on the football team.
It hadn’t occurred to Foy that anyone from
school might come to the library on a Saturday morning. The group began moving
toward them. Foy panicked.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said,
leaping to his feet. David didn’t reply. He was still staring at the pawn Foy
had just moved. Foy slipped through the juvenile literature and moved around the
outside wall to the restrooms, which were in a small alcove. He disappeared
quickly into the alcove, then stuck his head out to see what was happening.
The group of boys and girls flopped into the
seats around the table next to David, who looked up at them, then quickly
dropped his eyes back to the chessboard. A couple of the boys noticed who was
sitting next to them, and there was some snickering and whispering. One of the
boys said something to David, causing an outburst of laughter. A librarian
leaned over, poking her head from around the card catalogues with a stern
expression on her face. Julie Paine hissed, “Stop it!” and softly slapped the
boy on the arm. She glanced at David, then whispered some sort of reprimand to
the boys, a reprimand they all accepted because she was a beautiful and popular
girl. The giggles settled down, and the group ignored David and began talking
amongst themselves.
Foy leaned back into the alcove and chewed on
his thumb. His was a primitive existence that was somehow disconnected from
moral and ethical concerns. It’s not that he was unaware of what was right or
wrong. It’s not that he didn’t care about how David felt. But he lived below
those kinds of higher concerns. His junior high existence was mostly at the
level of fight or flight. There was no question of going back to the table with
David. That question wasn’t up for debate. The fear of open ridicule and being
seen with David Friedman swept that question away.
Foy left the alcove and continued along the
wall toward the front door. Between each row of books, he got a glimpse of
David, who was still staring at the chess board. After three or four rows, the
wall turned and he was more-or-less behind David. He slipped out the front door,
got on his bike, and rode straight home.
So great was Foy’s relief at having avoided
being caught in the library with David Friedman that he never considered how
David might react when he didn’t come back from the restroom. The truth is, he
didn’t really want to play chess with David and was happy to be set free from
the whole affair. Foy was 12-years-old, and he had a child’s ability to simply
put unpleasant thoughts out of his mind.
When Foy got home he watched some more cartoons
with his brother, who hadn’t moved from his spot in front of the television set.
Later he rode his bike, “popping wheelies” and jumping tin cans with a homemade
ramp. He played catch with the boy across the street until it was dark and time
to come inside.
The next day the Davis family went to church.
Foy’s father was one of the ministers. Church was like another world for Foy.
There was a completely different set of rules and social levels for adolescents
there. Foy was much more popular at church than he was at school. There was a
girl with whom he’d had a camp romance and a number of boys who were his good
friends. Foy basked in his weekend world, where he lived and moved in higher
social circles.
Sunday night he watched The Wonderful World of
Disney with his brother and mother, brushed his teeth, and went to bed. He had
not thought of David Friedman since he came home from the library.
On Monday morning, Foy walked into English and
saw David sitting in his usual seat a few rows in front of him. Foy felt a flush
of horror and shame. Suddenly he remembered everything and realized what he had
done. He had left David alone at the library with no explanation. Somehow the
full reality of the situation didn’t reach his awareness until that moment. For
the next hour he stared at the back of David’s head and thought about what must
have happened. He imagined David looking for him in the restroom and around the
library. He could see David gathering up his chess pieces and board in silence
while the boys at the table made faces or flashed obscene gestures.
And what would become of David’s chess club?
Foy knew the answer to that. There would be no chess club. His guilt and shame
created almost as much panic in him as he had felt at the library. The minute
class was over he darted out the door and ran down the hall.
Foy avoided David fairly well for the next
couple of days, but inevitably the moment came when they met in the hall. Foy
saw David headed toward him. There was no way to escape the encounter. David was
being followed and harassed by Chris Shotwell and his loutish friend Bryan, two
notorious troublemakers. As David drew near to Foy, their eyes met. To Foy’s
surprise, David’s facial expression didn’t change. He hardly seemed to recognize
Foy. He trudged past Foy like a man on a death march, seemingly in a trance,
with Chris and Bryan hooting and shoving him along the way.
Foy turned and watched him go by. What he felt
inside was only relief for not being called to task for things he had done and
things he had not done.
Foy and David didn’t have any meaningful
interaction for the remainder of junior high. Foy played football in 7th
grade and made the starting squad. His social level rose a bit. David existed
far below him, and he really never thought much about him after that. When they
all began high school, David Friedman disappeared. He either moved or his
parents mercifully made arrangements for him to go to a private school.
No one ever heard from him again.
****
Foy leaned back in his chair until he felt a
satisfying crack in his spine. He looked at the half-finished sermon on his
computer screen. David’s name came to his mind several times a year. It had ever
since he got out of college. He Googled David’s name once, finding an anarcho-capitalist
economics professor, a kabbalistic artist in Israel, and a photographer. None of
them bore any resemblance to the David Friedman of Edgewood Junior High.
After all these years, Foy felt a small jolt of
pain when he thought about David Friedman. He understood, of course, that he was
a child then and as much a victim of the system as David. He felt no guilt about
it. He felt only a nebulous, undefined stab of emotional pain.
When his own daughter went through a year of
torment in 5th grade, Foy saw the other side of the lives of kids
like David. He saw the emotional collapses at home, the fear that lead to nausea
and even vomiting before school, and the desperate begging to stay home.
After that, the little stab of pain had a
sharper edge to it.
Foy found it interesting that after all these
years, David Friedman hadn’t left him. David had even wormed his way slowly into
Foy’s theology. His memories of David had caused him to think that some sins are
never really atoned for. Some things cannot be fully redeemed. Redemption is a
Sunday school word. It has meaning and reality, but that meaning withers in the
face of real pain and injustice. There was a tough, hard-blinking pragmatism in
Foy’s Christianity, in part because of David Friedman.
He sometimes wondered if some strange karmic
force or principle would cause David’s name to come to his mind until every stab
of pain added up to the full measure of what David had received. No eternal
judgment. No arguing whether or not he could have done better. No guilt of any
kind.
Just a strangely comforting, mathematical
balance in the Cosmos.
rlp
The Foy Davis stories
