Chapter 67

Guy comes back up and says Hank, this is Tommy Osterhaust from Lebanon. Hank shakes the hand. How’s it going, Tommy? Pretty fair; how about you? Tommy—you know, don’t you, Hank?—made All-District last year at Lebanon. No foolin’, Guy, is that right? Yeah; yeah; so with you and Cyrus Layman¹ and Lord and Evenwrite and me and Tommy too, tell me we won’t have some depth in that backfield! Huh, tell me. I lean against the cycle ticking itself cool, and listen to them talk football, watch the way this Tommy Osterhaust studies Hank’s forearms. From the playground come the scattered² voices of touch football, keep away whatever, and the yell squad³ two four six eight who do we appreciate. I lean there, wait, watch everybody else wait too. They fart around awhile. Guy clears his throat and finally gets around to it. He flips⁴ the little boxing gloves on Tommy’s jacket with his finger. You know, don’t you, Hank, that Tommy is the big boxer⁶ too? No foolin’, Tommy, is that right? I spar around some, Hank. You must be pretty good to get that medal, Tommy. Yeah, Hank, I spar around little bit now and then...we had a championship team in Lebanon. Tommy was captain, Hank. You guys don’t box? It’s against the rules, Tommy. Do you know, Hank, that Tommy here took All-District and State and—which was it?— was either third or runner up in Northwest Golden Gloves! Third, Guy, just third; I really got my ass⁷ waxed when I got up with those Army guys from Fort Lewis. Hank—you know, don’t you, Tommy?—Hank took the one-sixty-seven division at the state wrestling meet in Corvallis last year. Yeah, I guess you told me that before, Guy. Oh boy, oh boy, tell me we won’t push Marshfield around this season like they was paper dolls; a boxing champion!—Guy takes Tommy’s sleeve—and a wrestling champion! He takes Hank’s sleeve, pulls them close. Tell me we won’t! I start to say now go to your corners and come out fighting. But I see Hank’s face and I don’t say anything, I see his face and hush⁸. Because that is all it would take. I know that look. With the grin white right at the edges like the muscles in his face holds each end of his mouth and wrings⁹ the blood out of it. I know the look and I know already and get set. Hank smiles that smile and watches Tommy; he’s already gone through the whole act, past the first few ignored remarks and past the bumps in the hallway and past the dirty playing on the field, and past whatever the final insult will be, to the place where they get down to what he knows already, what everybody knows already, will have to happen. And Hank is ready to get it over with. Because, after a whole summer of being teased and fighting, he is tired of it, sick and tired of it all, and any part of it he can bypass is fine with him. He smiles at Tommy and I see the cords in his neck start lifting his arms up. Behind us those scattered dumb girls two four six eight with Tommy distracted for just a hair to turn and listen, and he don’t have the vaguest inkling that the fight which he plans on happening three or four weeks from now is already right this minute ringing the bell round one and no preliminaries. And I lean and watch the cords lift Hank’s arms up, like number-ten cables lifting a log up to a truck. I’m the only one knows full-scale what this means. I know how unnatural¹⁰ stout¹¹ Hank is. He can hold a double-edged ax straight out arm’s length for eight minutes and thirty-six seconds. The closest I ever seen anybody else come to that was four-ten, and he a rigger thirty-five years old, big as a bear. Old Henry says Hank’s so godawful stout because something odd happened to Hank’s muscle tissue because of all the sulphur his first wife, Hank’s real ma, ate while she was pregnant with him. Hank grins when Henry says this and says must be. But I think different. I think there’s a lot more to it than that. Because Hank didn’t set that eightthirty-six record until the day Uncle Aaron kidded him about some jack⁵ in Washington holding a double-edge out there for eight. Then Hank did it. Eight-thirty-six by stopwatch. And no sulphur, neither, so that’s not it. Whatever the reason, I do know he’s god-awful stout and if he clips Tommy Osterhaust while Tommy’s looking off there at the yell squad he’ll split him like a mule¹² kicking a watermelon, but I don’t say anything, though there’s still time. Maybe I don’t say anything to stop it because I’m tired too, of just watching, of having to watch Hank wade¹³ through all the horse manure¹⁴. Because back then I’m not accepting my lot and enjoying it and getting a gas out of it. Anyway, I don’t say anything. So if it wasn’t for the eight-o’clock bell rings just at that instant Hank would have sure as shooting caught Tommy Osterhaust from his blind side like a mule kicking and would sure as shooting busted¹⁵ his skull¹⁶ like a ripe melon. Hank knows it too, how close he come. When the bell stops him, his shoulders sag¹⁷ and he looks at me. His hands are shaking. We go to class and he doesn’t say anything to me till lunchtime. He’s standing¹⁸ at the cafeteria fountain, looking at the water running, and I come up. Ain’t you gonna get in line for chow? I’m gonna cut the rest of the day, Joby. Can you get you a ride home? Hank, you—Or look, I can leave you the cycle and hitch¹⁹ a ride, if—Hank, I don’t give a hang about the cycle; but you— Didn’t you see this morning? Didn’t you, what almost happened? Boy; I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Flank, listen. No, Joe, I don’t know what’s the matter...am I getting punch-drunk? Hank, now listen. I would of creamed him, Joby, you know that? Hank. Listen. Listen, ah, listen. He stands there, but I can’t say what I want to. That was my first time back to school with my new face, and I’d changed outside but it hadn’t come inside yet. So I didn’t have the words to tell him what I knew. Or maybe I don’t already know then. But I couldn’t tell him that, listen, Hank: maybe whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and everyone that loveth him is got of him. That maybe someday the morning stars sing together and someday all the sons of God’ll holler for joy and someday maybe the wolf is going to dwell with the lamb and the leopard²⁰ lie down like a kid and maybe someday everybody’ll beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into fishhooks and all that sort of thing but until that time you might as well take what the Lord’s judged is yours to do and do what the Lord has already decided²¹ is yours to do and have a gas with it! Do I know that then? Maybe. Down in the middle of my heart, maybe. But I don’t know it to tell him. So all I can say is Ah ah ah listen Hankus listen Hank while he watches the water run. So he goes on home and he doesn’t come the next day, or the day after that, and then at practice Coach Lewellyn wants to know where’s the big star and I tell him Hank is under the weather and Guy Wieland says more likely under the bedspread, and all of them except the coach laugh. And after practice I take the activity bus instead of walking to the motel where me and Pop are staying those days back then. The bus goes past the motel, but I don’t like to ask to be let off there. Through the window I see my daddy in the kitchen as the bus flashes by, head back in the lamplight with his teeth like quicksilver grinning at somebody I can’t see, Lord only knows who this time. But it gets me thinking. You sow the wind you’re going to have to reap the whirlwind. There’s no getting away from it, not for Papa or me or anybody, and not for Hank neither, and he and that woman sure been seeding wind enough not to have much gripe coming about how much he has to reap. Maybe I’ll tell him that. At the landing I stand and holler until I see a light show in the boat shed and he comes over to me in the motorboat. Hey look, is that you, Joby? Yeah, I came up to see if you’d died or what. No, dammit, I just been holding things down while old Henry’s gone to Tacoma on a timberland contract. Hank, Coach Lewellyn was asking if—Yeah, I’ll bet he was asking. I told him you was sick. Yeah, what did you tell that Tommy Osterhaust? Huh? Never mind. He stoops down and picks up a handful of flat rocks and goes to skipping them across the water, one after the other in the dark. Lights blink around in the house over there. I get me some rocks and I skip rocks for a while. I came out to talk to him but I knew already before I even got off the bus that we wouldn’t talk, because we never do. We’ve never been able to talk. Maybe because we’ve never had to. We growed up close enough we pretty much know what’s happening. He knows I’m out here to say to him you might as well come on back to school and get on with it because you and Tommy Osterhaust are going to fight it out sooner or later. And I know he is already answering sure but didn’t you see the other day how I can’t do it sooner and I can’t take all the bullshit that goes before the later. I don’t care about the fight. Oh, yes I do care. But I mean I don’t care about the actual hitting and getting hit so much as I care that I always have to be goddammit working up to fighting with some-guy-or-other! (And always will, too, Hank, right up from then till now and from now till doomsday, so you might as well accept what you know already and see what you can find about it to have a ball with. Always will, with Tommy Osterhaust or Floyd Evenwrite or Biggy Newton, or with the falling-apart donkey or the berry vines or the river, because it is your lot and you know it is. And I guess it is your lot as well that you got to do it by the rules, because if you’d caught Tommy Osterhaust the other day while he was ogling²² the yell squad you’d of killed him and for no reason at all.) But I don’t say anything. We skip rocks a while longer, and he takes me home on the cycle. The next day he’s at school. And after school he draws his practice togs and we all go out to the field and sit on the ground while Lewellyn tells us all about his college days for about the dozenth time. Hank isn’t listening, it looks like. He’s digging turf from his cleats with a stick, tired of Lewellyn’s bull. Everybody else really listening to Lewellyn tell how we’re a fine bunch of young men and he’s gonna be proud of us come what may this season because he knows win, lose, or draw we’ll be good sports and a credit to Wakonda High. I see Tommy Osterhaust, who hasn’t heard all this before, with his mouth open like he tastes the words, nods every time the coach says something he likes. Hank stops digging at his cleats and throws away the popsicle stick. Then he turns and happens to see the way Tommy eats up Lewellyn’s words. And men, the coach says, and men...I want you to remember this always: You are like sons to me. Win, lose, or draw, I love you. I love you boys like sons, win, lose, or draw. And I want you to remember this: what that grand old man of football said. Grant-land Rice. Remember this poem. Remember this. Then he closes his puffy eyes like he’ll pray now. Everybody is still. The coach sounds like Brother Walker’s blind brother, Brother Leonard the Seer, when he gets up to talk. Remember this, men, the coach says, remember this: For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, He marks—not that you won or lost—but [the coach draws a breath] But how... you played the game! And Hank says, just loud enough, bullshit. The coach doesn’t act like he heard. He never does. Because right behind his head is that big scoreboard donated by the Rotary²³, and all the records list down along it Hank Stamper, record-holder in this, Hank Stamper, record-holder in that, on almost every other name, so he knows better than argue with it. But Tommy Osterhaust turns and glares at Hank and says I don’t think that’s very funny, Stamper. And Hank says I almost give a rat’s ass what you think, Osterhaust. And so forth²⁴ and so on until the coach stops it and starts the practice. After shower everybody’s ready. Tommy Osterhaust talking low with a bunch of guys next to the foot-powder trough. Hank and me get dressed by ourselves, not talking. After we get dressed and Hank combs his hair we all go outside together and they fight in the gravel²⁵ at the bus stop. And all the rest of the year everybody blames Hank for Wakonda High’s not winning district title and maybe even state, like we might of done if Tommy had been capable to play for us. And for a long time after that the talk in the Snag was that Hank Stamper would never of made the Shriners’ All-Star team if Osterhaust had been back there to divvy up some of the running. Hank never say anything about it even when they told him to his face. Just grins and shuffle²⁶ his feet is all. Except one time. When me and him and Janice and Leota Nielsen all go out on the dunes²⁷ and get drunk on wine and Leota brings the fight up because she’d been going with Tommy. We all think Hank’s passed out on the blanket with his hand over his eyes. I’m trying to tell her what really went on, that Tommy had been spoiling for a fight from the first day he set eyes on Hank and that it was really him, not Hank like everybody always says, really Tommy that wanted the fight. Yes, but, but just because Tommy wanted to fight I don’t see ...well, if Hank didn’t really want to do it why did he beat him up so terrible? I start to say something but Hank beats me to it. He doesn’t even move the hand off his eyes. He says Leota, sweetheart, when you come after me to do it you don’t want me doing some half-assed job, do you? Leota says what! And Hank repeats the same thing—you want the best I can put out, don’t you? Leota gets so upset we have to take her home. At her door she turns and hollers back, what do you think? you’re God’s gift to woman? Hank don’t answer but I holler some things at her that she doesn’t understand. About how she’s just like Tommy Osterhaust, only doesn’t fight as fair. I should keep still. It was the wine. I yell and she cries and yells some more; then her big brother comes out on the porch and he gets into it, hollering. He is one of Hank’s motorcycle buddies²⁸. Once they gypsied all the way to Grand Canyon²⁹.

1 layman   

n.俗人，门外汉，凡人

参考例句：

• These technical terms are difficult for the layman to understand.这些专门术语是外行人难以理解的。
• He is a layman in politics.他对政治是个门外汉。

2 scattered   

adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的

参考例句：

• Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来，塞进文件夹里。

3 squad   

n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组

参考例句：

• The squad leader ordered the men to mark time.班长命令战士们原地踏步。
• A squad is the smallest unit in an army.班是军队的最小构成单位。

4 flips   

轻弹( flip的第三人称单数 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥

参考例句：

• Larry flips on the TV while he is on vacation in Budapest. 赖瑞在布达佩斯渡假时，打开电视收看节目。
• He flips through a book before making a decision. 他在决定买下一本书前总要先草草翻阅一下。

5 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

6 boxer   

n.制箱者，拳击手

参考例句：

• The boxer gave his opponent a punch on the nose.这个拳击手朝他对手的鼻子上猛击一拳。
• He moved lightly on his toes like a boxer.他像拳击手一样踮着脚轻盈移动。

7 ass   

n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人

参考例句：

• He is not an ass as they make him.他不象大家猜想的那样笨。
• An ass endures his burden but not more than his burden.驴能负重但不能超过它能力所负担的。

8 hush   

int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静

参考例句：

• A hush fell over the onlookers.旁观者们突然静了下来。
• Do hush up the scandal!不要把这丑事声张出去！

9 wrings   

绞( wring的第三人称单数 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水）

参考例句：

• And so that interview Between Lucie and Sydney Carton has a pathos that wrings our hearts. 因此，露西和西德尼·卡登之间的会晤带有一种使我们感到揪心的凄楚的气氛。 来自英汉 - 翻译样例 - 文学
• The girl wrings her dress dry. 这个女孩子扭乾她的衣服。

10 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

• Did her behaviour seem unnatural in any way?她有任何反常表现吗？
• She has an unnatural smile on her face.她脸上挂着做作的微笑。

12 mule   

n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人

参考例句：

• A mule is a cross between a mare and a donkey.骡子是母马和公驴的杂交后代。
• He is an old mule.他是个老顽固。

13 wade   

v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉

参考例句：

• We had to wade through the river to the opposite bank.我们只好涉水过河到对岸。
• We cannot but wade across the river.我们只好趟水过去。

14 manure   

n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥

参考例句：

• The farmers were distributing manure over the field.农民们正在田间施肥。
• The farmers used manure to keep up the fertility of their land.农夫们用粪保持其土质的肥沃。

15 busted   

adj. 破产了的，失败了的，被降级的，被逮捕的，被抓到的 动词bust的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• You are so busted! 你被当场逮住了！
• It was money troubles that busted up their marriage. 是金钱纠纷使他们的婚姻破裂了。

16 skull   

n.头骨；颅骨

参考例句：

• The skull bones fuse between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.头骨在15至25岁之间长合。
• He fell out of the window and cracked his skull.他从窗子摔了出去，跌裂了颅骨。

17 sag   

v.下垂，下跌，消沉；n.下垂，下跌，凹陷，[航海]随风漂流

参考例句：

• The shelf was beginning to sag beneath the weight of the books upon it.书架在书的重压下渐渐下弯。
• We need to do something about the sag.我们须把下沉的地方修整一下。

18 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

19 hitch   

v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉

参考例句：

• They had an eighty-mile journey and decided to hitch hike.他们要走80英里的路程，最后决定搭便车。
• All the candidates are able to answer the questions without any hitch.所有报考者都能对答如流。

20 leopard   

n.豹

参考例句：

• I saw a man in a leopard skin yesterday.我昨天看见一个穿着豹皮的男人。
• The leopard's skin is marked with black spots.豹皮上有黑色斑点。

21 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

22 ogling   

v.（向…）抛媚眼，送秋波( ogle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He was not in the habit of ogling women. 他没有盯着女人看个没完的习惯。
• Uncle Geooge got a black eye for ogling a lady in the pub. 乔治叔叔在酒店里对一女士抛媚眼而被打黑了一只眼睛。

23 rotary   

adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的

参考例句：

• The central unit is a rotary drum.核心设备是一个旋转的滚筒。
• A rotary table helps to optimize the beam incidence angle.一张旋转的桌子有助于将光线影响之方式角最佳化。

24 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

25 gravel   

n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石

参考例句：

• We bought six bags of gravel for the garden path.我们购买了六袋碎石用来铺花园的小路。
• More gravel is needed to fill the hollow in the drive.需要更多的砾石来填平车道上的坑洼。

26 shuffle   

n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走

参考例句：

• I wish you'd remember to shuffle before you deal.我希望在你发牌前记得洗牌。
• Don't shuffle your feet along.别拖着脚步走。

27 dunes   

沙丘( dune的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The boy galloped over the dunes barefoot. 那男孩光着脚在沙丘间飞跑。
• Dragging the fully laden boat across the sand dunes was no mean feat. 将满载货物的船拖过沙丘是一件了不起的事。

28 buddies   

n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人

参考例句：

• We became great buddies. 我们成了非常好的朋友。 来自辞典例句
• The two of them have become great buddies. 他们俩成了要好的朋友。 来自辞典例句

29 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。