Knuckleheads Read Online Free PDF Page A

consistently after that.”
    “Not my kid’s fault.”
    “No, it’s not.”
    We’re stuck in mud. Two tough dump-trucks with rusted under-carriages and noxious diesel fuel and our front bumpers too close to each other to maneuver, our wheels useless. I watch him and wonder if he’ll admit his kid’s a screw-up. I could end this right now, tell him all right, it’s just a misunderstanding, tomorrow’s a new day. As long as Ronnie comes to class smiling and prepared, and I’ll give him another chance. But I don’t tell Bassoli anything, I just sit there, behind my bulky teacher’s desk with the box of tissues on it, and the stapler and the grade book, and I watch him. I just sit there and wait.
    “You had too much mouth,” he says. “That’s why we hated you. All your yapping from the outfield.”
    I don’t respond. In teacher school, the technique is called wait time. Give the student enough room to figure out what he wants to say. Don’t interrupt and try to guide the conversation.
    “It was respect, you know. We hit you because you were the only guy on your team who could threaten us.”
    I hold back and wait some more. It’s difficult. I think of Rupert, how he disappeared into the woods. How two weeks later, at prom, we teased him without rest and he got drunk and we kicked him out of the limo and left him passed out on his front lawn. When his brother tried to drag him into the shower, Rupert punched him and broke his glasses. Kid showed up to his ninth grade English class the next day with a gauze bandage roofing one eye like a pirate.
    “Everything I’ve done bad in my life I’ve paid for,” Bassoli says. “My wife left me. A sturgeon beat my lungs to shit. I’m not apologizing for anything.”
    Is that what I’m after? An apology? I doubt it. I spent too many years shoving noses into the mat to care whether people are sorry for what they do. “Show me your tattoo,” I say. “I want to see your tattoo again.”
    He’s not nearly as proud this time. Pushes up from his desk as if I’d just asked him to read a passage of Shakespeare aloud, as if he’d like to run me over with one of his cabs. His undress is quicker, less dramatic. Some facial fat twitches. When his chest is bare though, this time he can’t help but smirk. He knows what he’s got.
    The fish is a luminous spire in full breach. A dazzling aquatic angel ascending, propelling itself skyward by the torque of its own magnificent thrust. I try to imagine what it saw as it leapt, how big Bassoli’s chest grew in its eyes. I try to imagine the incalculable timing that led to the collision of sturgeon and father, the collision that left a dent.
    “Lift your arms,” I say.
    “Make it jump,” I say.
    He does.

ON THE CASE
    YOU TELL DANIEL YOU THINK SOMEBODY STOLE A BOX OF POP TARTS from your backseat because, well, who else are you gonna tell?
    Not your wife. You don’t want her to know you bought Pop Tarts from the Safeway, or that you ever buy them, not with your stomach starting to push like a soccer ball against the skin of your shirt. You can’t tell your kids either because you don’t want them thinking buying Pop Tarts is a legitimate way to spend money after you refused them the Pokemon treasure chest and the GameCube. So who else can you tell? The cops? You’re gonna report a Grand Theft Pop Tart?
    You tell Daniel at work because you know he’ll think it’s funny, he’ll laugh with you, but he’ll take it seriously too.
    “Are you telling me someone jacked Pop Tarts from your car?” he says.
    “Yeah, man a double-box. Sixteen pastries.”
    “What flavor?”
    “Strawberry.”
    “Frosted?”
    “Dude, of course.”
    “That’s messed up, man,” Daniel says. “People are messed up. What are you gonna do?”
    “I’m not gonna do anything. It’s Pop Tarts. Should I, like, red alert the FBI?”
    “You could call Safeway and complain. Say they need more security in the parking lot. Demand they replace the