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 Layman 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 scattered voices of touch football, keep away whatever, and the yell squad 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 flips the little boxing gloves on Tommy’s jacket with his finger. You know, don’t you, Hank, that Tommy is the big boxer 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 ass 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 hush. 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 wrings 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 unnatural stout 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 jack 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 mule 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 wade through all the horse manure. 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 busted his skull like a ripe melon. Hank knows it too, how close he come. When the bell stops him, his shoulders sag 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 standing 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 hitch 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 leopard 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 decided 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............