Faded old pale yellow school bus, cast off of a wealthier school system, scion of Michigan and another decade, engine knocking, no shocks to speak of, rocking and shuddering along the highway, carrying uniformed middle schoolers westward, raggedy ill-fitting outfits not unlike the seen-better-days bus that bears them: hand-me-downs of classes long since graduated, of teams past–of people grown now into their full bodies.
Boys gathered about the middle of the bus, eyes focused on two of their number seated and facing each other across the aisle, extending their fists so that they almost touch, one of them clutching a tan plastic comb.
“Hold up, fellas,” says a skinny little greasy-haired boy named Lonnie. “Y’all haven’t said yet what you’re playin for?”
The contestants, myself one of them, withdraw their fists and peer up at him.
Tye, the boy across from me, responds. “If I win, I gets his lunch money for next week.”
Me, glancing away toward the front of the bus, then beyond it, through the glass, at a distant blue line of ridges on the horizon. I look at Tye and smile a slow smile. “If I win, you have to walk to the top of a hill I point out.”
Questioning look from him as Lonnie assumes again his self-appointed role of referee. “Yall’s bets have been staked,” he says, solemn voice brimming with ridiculous pomp. “Now we got to see who gets first go. I’m thinking of a number between one and a hundred. Fella comes nearest gets dibs at grabbing U’s comb.”
“Easy for me,” I say, chest-thumping the digits on my jersey with the fist that clutches the comb. “Number, name, game. Always the same.”
Tye, confused, squinting at the floor in thought for a moment, then brightening. “Fifty be half-a-hundred and that be what Jordan scored the other night. Put me down for fifty, man.”
Lonnie, solemn again, guiding the proceedings, enjoying his rare authority. “Tye the 2-guard gets it cause the number on my mind, fellas, is sixty-nine. Sixty-nine.”
“Hell yeah!” someone says.
Laughter from everyone, self included.
“Alright now, gentleman,” says Lonnie expectantly, and the smiles on the surrounding faces deepen even as the ones on Tye’s face and mine fade and disappear.
I extend my right fist, Tye’s coming forth to mirror it. Then with my left hand I set the comb down flat just behind the ridge of my knuckles, jagged, uneven teeth facing outward, toward Tye. If an onlooker happened to guess the crude teeth of the comb had been inexpertly sharpened with a pocketknife, breaking off a few in the process, he would be guessing right.
Even as my left hand comes away, Tye’s–fist unclenched, thought and action almost as one–has the comb, ripping it hard to the right. I jerk my hand back and down, but not fast enough to avoid having the skin on the outer three knuckles raked open: a scratch more than a cut, but enough to etch into the flesh a bright crimson line and heap little white curling mounds of flesh on either side of the narrow wound.
Tye laughing and tossing the comb back to me. “This gon be easy money.”
*
The object of Bloody Knuckles–at least the version we played–is to break open your opponent’s knuckles, making them all bleed, through a series of vicious blows from a straight, sharp-toothed comb.
Make a fist and lay the comb on the back of your hand, just behind the ridgeline of bone. Your opponent then either tries to grab the comb and slice it across your knuckles before you can move your hand, or feints in an effort to make you flinch in fear at the impending attack so that the comb falls. If successful in the former action, the other contestant gets to attack again–up to a maximum of three times before the roles are reversed. The latter event, the comb falling as a result of a feint, is considered a foul and, as a result, the defender must hold his hand out while the other player whacks it with the comb as hard as he can. The game ends when one of the contestants forfeits on account of physical discomfort and/or having all four of his knuckles busted open. That person is the “loser.”
One of the advantages of Bloody Knuckles is that it can be concealed behind bus seats, beneath cafeteria tables, or by onlookers’ bodies. However the games we liked the most required the total absence of adults. One of the strongest boys on the team, I often was invited to take part in Pass Out, in which a participant, willing or otherwise, (was) stood against a wall. The person would then hold their breath or be forcibly smothered by a towel while I braced my arms against their chest and pushed as hard as I could. Invariably the condition for which the pasttime was named occured and the person slumped to the floor unconscious while the rest of us laughed and hollered, “Pass Out!”
Another favorite grownupless game—a stealthy, surprise-based affair that never really ended—was Sac-Tag, which tended to burst into being suddenly, usually in the locker room, when a potential attacker observed a prospective victim not paying attention, often while in the shower or changing clothes, and proceeded to backhand his testicles as hard as he could. The person who had just been hit was considered “it” until he succeeded in tagging someone else. Terrible as it may sound, I always suspected that if Coach knew about this particular game he would have approved of it since it kept everyone on-edge and alert, likely aiding in the development of our reflexes. And because the contest could be resumed at any time, you always had to be on your toes, which was not a good thing for those more slow-witted teammates possessed of limited attention spans. In fact, the mother of one repeat loser at Sac-Tag went so far as to remove her son from the team and threaten to sue the school when she discovered the reason for his frequent stiff manner of walking and limping about the house following practice. Yet nothing ever came of her threats other than a few jokes by us at her expense, and the season wore on, the boy and his mother all but forgotten. In the end, no one cared, not even Coach. That kid was about as good at basketball as he was at Sac-Tag.
*
Tye gloating as I place the comb on the back of my clenched fist once more. He feints, fingers darting over the comb, but my hand holds steady—not so much as a tremble. Then a double feint and he has the comb again, grasping and raking it in one swift motion.
This time he strikes only the two outer knuckles, but the blow cuts deeper and a warm trickle traces the inside of my pinky.
Tye laughs again. “I be carryin two trays next week.”
Lonnie to me, like some slow-witted boxing manager reasoning with his beleaguered fighter, “Sure you wanna keep playin? He gotcha good that time, U.”
Me, ignoring him, placing the comb on my hand once more.
And Tye grabbing it again. This time I don’t even try to move my fist, but rather tilt the outer portion upward so that the three already injured knuckles receive the brunt of the blow. Searing white-hot pain and my knuckles bleed. But not all of them, for in sacrificing the others I save the one.
Tye, clutching the crimson-tipped comb, laughing, and me laughing with him as I flex my bloodied hand open and shut.
But then I rip the comb away from him and stare into his eyes, smiling. “Now it’s my turn.”
And suddenly he stops laughing, mouth lapsing into a parted line, cheer draining from eyes grown slightly larger.
“Carve him up, U!” someone says.
Me, holding the comb out to him. “Careful now, Tye. Don’t drop it. Remember that it’s sharp. If it falls you have to hold out your hand for me to hit. I get to hit it as hard as I want.”
Tye, sober, crouched forward, shaking slightly, carefully setting the comb on the back of his trembling fist.
As his hand comes away my whole body jerks, legs kicking outward, hand darting over Tye’s in a feint.
Breathless curse from him at his body’s involuntary start and the comb drops to the grit-coated floor.
Nervous laughter from the onlookers and a subdued expression from Tye as he picks up the comb, blood and dirt caked between its jagged teeth, and slowly hands it to me. Next, the sad albeit somewhat comical spectacle of a teen athlete, bigger and older than the rest of us on account of the grade he has failed, holding out his fist with head averted, like a frightened child not wishing to see its mother extract a splinter or apply a salve.
And me, wasting not time, eager to get it over with, bringing the comb down and across–quick, fluid, precise stroke—a chopping motion destined to splinter a million shards of kindling.
And Tye, half-rising from his seat, jerking his gashed hand to his chest, covering it with the other as his head tilts backward, mouth shaping the letter O, unleashing an ear-splitting falsetto howl.
“Ooooooooo!”
Then Coach’s voice—abrupt, harsh, irritated–bellowing from behind his newspaper at the back of the bus. “Keep it down up there, fellas! Quit screwin around and think about the game!”
Casey Clabough says, “I currently am English Graduate Director at Lynchburg College and literature editor for Encyclopedia Virginia. My travel memoir, The Warrior’s Path: Reflections Along an Ancient Route (2007), was a finalist for both the 2008 Appalachian Book of the Year and the 2008 Library of Virginia Book of the Year. I also have written scholarly books on the writers James Dickey, Fred Chappell, George Garrett, and Gayl Jones. I am a contributing editor to the Hollins Critic and the Sewanee Review, and recently assumed the editorship of the James Dickey Review.”
