Chapter Twenty Nine

1

Found again on the Number 48.

“The only certainty is the pivotal role this Maratha defeat played in opening India to British influence.  The Battle of Panipat was the last military engagement of India’s medieval period, and after its conclusion Muslim dominance throughout the northern states continued to ebb.  After this battle the presence of the West in Indian affairs was felt throughout the subcontinent, on a scale unimaginable to previous generations of Indian statesmen.

“By 1849 the entirety of India would become the domain of the British East India Company, marking the end of a process that can be traced back to Govind Pant, and the decisive battle of Panipat.  As to what measure of credit (or discredit) we can allow Govind Pant Bundele for this loss of sovereignty, only further research will reveal.”

And returned in August to the Broadview Library.

2

Sometimes on the playground the girls would chase down the boy and his friend.  They would surround the two boys on the asphalt, and the two boys would sit there, in the midst of their circle, cautious and out of breath.

        Then, one of the bigger girls, the one with all the older sisters, would lift up her dress and show the two boys her panties.  After she had done so, one of her classmates would follow suit, and after that another, all the way around the circle.  None of the children would speak as this ritual was performed.

The two boys were never sure what they were supposed to feel about this display of underpants, and the girls were equally clueless.  It was only a ritual they performed several times a year, and nothing more.  They were all too small to grow excited in this play, so instead the ritual was quiet and solemn.  They knew there was something forbidden in what they were doing, though they could not have told you what or why.

He might have been one of those two boys.  He might have been the Tail, or he might have been the Remedy.  He was just a boy, slowly growing into someone else.  And her, she was elsewhere, in another school far away.  She might have been showing her underpants to other boys, or she might have been the kind of girl who would never do such a thing.  They are all pieces of the past.  They are all people we are supposed to have been.  Their memories are carried forward.  Even if they have not been.  Not for a good long while now.

        Later that day it was time for history class, and he was drawing pictures inside his textbook.  It was a very colorful book, with a color scheme resembling the American flag, and the Statue of Liberty could be discerned on the cover.  The title of the book was “Voice of a Nation,” and the contents of this book were unapologetically patriotic.  It was the kind of book that taught Americans to love America.  It was the kind of book that spoke of other nations in the most cursory of terms.

        He was not a good student of history that day.  He knew that there was a quiz coming, and that the quiz had something to do with the Constitution, but he was too involved with his drawing and thinking of the playground to care.  His mind was always on the clock, and his left eye told him that there were sixteen minutes standing between himself and kickball, sixteen minutes standing between himself and the pretty girls with the questioning eyes.

        His right eye told him that his Captain America had arms that were too long, and that his shield wasn’t quite a circle.  His right hand was trying to draw a motorcycle, but botching the attempt.  Motorcycles and machines were so difficult to draw.  Even more difficult than superheroes.

He was always drawing pictures of superheroes in his books.  Next to George Washington he had already drawn The Flash, resplendent in red and yellow.  Next to William Penn and an inset map of Pennsylvania he had drawn Spider-man, engaged in battle with some tentacled beast.  He was better at drawing the heads and torsos of his heroes.  Their legs were always too long, and their arms likewise out of proportion. 

Had his teacher noticed him defacing his book, he would have been in serious trouble – trouble precluding the possibility of recess – but right then she was busy with one of the wall maps, and talking about another long-dead white male.  He couldn’t conceive of what the American Revolution, or the War of 1812 had to do with him.  He couldn’t, moreover, conceive of why anyone would want to remember, or want to think about such things.  The superheroes that populated his fantasies were so much more enticing.  They came in every kind of color, and they always had an enemy right in front of them, an enemy they could fight.

        His class was in an old brick building, dating back to 1902.  For Seattle it was an exceptionally old building, though not an exceptionally stately building.  It was the kind of school they would have built for people without a future, in a place that wasn’t developing into anything.  To a child’s eyes, the hallways in that building were impossibly vast, and around every corner there was always a stairwell, leading to some foreboding door.  The basement of that school was a source of nightmares to children in the lower grades, full of yet other stairwells that descended into blackness, basements below the basement, and midnight passages festooned with antiquated pipes and metal railings.  The outmoded, utilitarian nature of the place spoke of ghosts and secrets, things that made the more imaginative children shudder.

        Outside the school the suburbs stretched, the forgotten suburbs built by forgotten people who were quietly prosperous.  The houses were smallish wood things, and they parked their wood-paneled station wagons next to newer, Japanese cars in their driveways.  A mall was never far away.  One of those houses was his.

        In later years, he would remember this time as being better illustrated than anything experienced in adult life.  Even the drone of his teacher had a certain resonance.  The comic books were brighter, the lights of the arcades flashed more brilliantly, and even the rustle of the little girls’ dresses was different, purer, more subtle.  It didn’t matter what he did then, because it all glowed with the same lovely freedom.  He could have been anything from that moment on, even if he didn’t end up being much.

        A man, by all accounts.  Like many other men, remembered for his failures.  But beyond the failures there lay a little boy, much like other little boys, and memories of life in a village that was a city, a city that was the site of many defeats in many ages.  The boy inside the man smiles at the remembering.