Pugilists
“What the fuck?!”
Devin slammed on the brakes as an expensive sports car swerved around him in Terrebonne’s crowded student parking lot. The car swung into one of the few spots that were left – one that he’d set his eyes on.
He looked over at Scarlett in the passenger seat. Her hands gripped the seat belt, and her nerves must have been as rattled as his.
In the last few weeks since the semester had started, the lines between the Terrebonne student body and those who used to call Vandebilt home had only become more defined despite Terrebonne’s administration’s best efforts to draw the two groups together. It was an order from the superintendent and Devin’s dad for the public schools to make them “feel at home.”
Of course, the repairs to the school had already been delayed by bad weather.
“You’d think that driving those kinds of cars would come with extra driving courses,” Scarlett said when she’d regained her composure.
“Because their parents wouldn’t just pay for that to be rubber stamped, too,” Devin said, as he sped into a spot before that one could be taken as well. Unfortunately, it was close to the little sports car that had almost ran into him.
He heard a splatting noise on his back windshield and turned around to see an iced latte sliding down it.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going next time!” a voice shouted from outside.
Devin snatched the keys out of the ignition, jumping out of the car.
“Devin, just leave it,” Scarlett called behind him.
His car wasn’t much, but he’d mowed a lot of lawns and done a lot of odd jobs through the neighborhood to buy it. And the last thing he was going to do was let some rich punk throw coffee on it and not say anything about it.
He smacked the cup off his window and turned around looking for the culprit. He came face-to-face with them quicker than he’d expected. Or face-to-chest.
“I threw it,” Caesar said, shoving him. “You want to do something about it?”
Devin looked around and noticed the group of students being drawn to the commotion. He glanced at Scarlett who’d gotten out of the car.
“Devin, let’s just go,” she said.
“Yeah. Devin, listen to your bitch. Before you get knocked the fuck out,” Caesar said.
Ron tried to shove his way between them, but Caesar pushed him back. “C’mon now, Caesar. You threw that shit at his car. He’s mad. Let it go. And we’re already going to have to listen to Emma’s whining because you threw her basic bitch pick-me-up.”
Deciding he’d already had enough of Caesar Jenkins, Devin shoved him back. High school students had been to this rodeo enough times to know what was about to happen and a bigger group of them piled around.
Caesar stepped back and dropped his bag on the ground. He took off his championship ring and handed it to Ron.
“You really want to do this?” he asked, shedding his letterman’s jacket. “You really want to get embarrassed today?”
“Let’s go, Devin,” Scarlett said.
Devin shook his head and put his fists up. The last fight he’d been in was in grade school and he was the bigger kid. Maybe, he’d get lucky and Caesar would trip into his hands.
“Hey, hey! What’s going on over here?!” the school’s chubby student resource officer shoved through the crowd, pepper spray at the ready. He looked at Caesar and Devin. “I know you two knuckleheads not about to cause trouble this early. Y’all better get your asses to class before I start handing out trips to East Street.”
Caesar chuckled as he bent down to grab his jacket. “You got a guardian angel, King.” He picked up the rest of his stuff and walked away.
Devin waited until the crowd dispersed before relaxing.
Scarlett slapped him on the shoulder.
“What?”
“I can’t believe you were actually going to fight him. That’s so stupid.”
“He would’ve deserved it.”
“Still stupid.”
And then Devin was left alone as Scarlett stormed off toward the school.
-*****-
Caesar held a limp, cold French fry between two fingers in front of his face. Sighing, he flung it aside then threw the tray on the ground as well. “The fucking food here is so shit. Inmates eat better than this.”
“You would know about that.” Britton laughed with Ron joining in, poking fun at his day’s stint in the parish’s jail. “Did anyone ask you for your cornbread?”
“Ha-yuk, ha-yuk, ha-yuk. You’re so funny, bro.”
Ron patted him on the shoulder. “Look on the bright side. At least the food here will just make you throw up. You eat anything else here and you’ll have bigger things to worry about.”
“Bigger issues with a small member.” Britton laughed again.
“Isn’t your girlfriend around here somewhere expecting you?” Caesar asked him. “Or did she decide to leave you because she has to look at you too often now?”
“That’s cold blooded, man. I didn’t say shit when you started talking about you were dating Emma. I could’ve pointed out that she must have some good snatch for you to put a leash on it.”
“I’m trying something new.” Caesar shrugged.
“Trying something you haven’t done since Gina had you wrapped around her finger two years ago? You’re talking like you’ve never been tied to one woman before,” Ron said.
“Gina who?”
“You know who I’m talking about.”
Caesar shook his head. “I don’t anyone by the name of Gina. You must have me confused with someone else, bro.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Caesar tuned the conversation out as Ron and Britton began talking about whatever party they were all going to go to that weekend. Being at Terrebonne was seemingly beginning to suck the life out of him. The way all the students were herded to and fro under the watchful eye of the school’s SRO.
He’d seen more fights than he thought possible in a place that didn’t have barbed wire fences, and more pregnant teens than a Planned Parenthood. They called their fieldhouse the Jungle, but truth was, the entire school was a damn jungle.
Football tryouts would be coming up before they knew it, and all the ex-Vandebilt players there had committed to playing for Terrebonne after Coach Thomas had told them that he’d be joining the Tigers’ coaching staff. Maybe getting back on the field would be what was needed to shake Caesar out of his funk.
“Are you ignoring me?” a female voice said from his right. He looked down to find an angry Emma looking back up at him.
“No, I heard you,” he lied. He was already beginning to regret agreeing to “dating” her just so she’d let him fuck her again.
“If you heard me, what’d I say?”
Caesar looked at Ron and Britton for help, but they’d turned away from the couple and were pretending to look at something across the school grounds.
“Alright, so I wasn’t paying attention. What the fuck do you want?”
“I said Hollie and I are sneaking off campus to go get something to eat and since you threw my breakfast at some kid’s car, you owe me.”
“Since when is coffee a complete breakfast?”
Emma put her hands on her hips. “I was implying that you should repay me for the money of mine you wasted, not asking you to critique my choices.”
With a deep breath to stop himself from saying something, Caesar reached into his pocket for his wallet but stopped short of giving her money.
“C’mon, Caesar. Stop playing around. We only have like 20 minutes.”
Caesar shoved his wallet back in his pocket and started walking toward the band hall which connected to the neighboring junior high through the stadium – the avenue for students sneaking off campus. “Fuck it. I’m coming with you. I’ll buy your food.”
“You’re going to get us caught! You don’t look like a junior high kid!” Emma shouted following behind him.
“Yo, where are y’all going?” Ron called. He noticed where they were going then grabbed Britton by his jacket and followed them as well.
-*****-
“So, let me get this straight. You didn’t even fight that motherfucker and ya girl still mad about it?” Hasan asked Devin as the two of them walked into the back of a local grocery store. Hasan had convinced Devin to apply for an after-school job with him, much to Devin’s parents' chagrin.
“I don’t know. I guess she expected me to take the high road or something. Be the bigger man and just walk away. I usually would’ve.” Devin shrugged.
He reached into his pocket for a box cutter to slash saran wrap off stacks of new stock fresh off a truck. Nearby, a couple of their coworkers did the same.
“The question is then, if she’s going to be mad at you because you didn’t fight him.” Hasan paused before lifting up a sack of bags of rice and tossing it into a grocery basket. “And she would’ve been mad at you if you did fight him. Why didn’t you just punch him in his shit when you had the chance?”
Devin shrugged again, hefting two cases of Vienna sausage onto a cart. “I’ve never been in a real fight before outside of little scraps when I was like 6. Isn’t it hard to fight motherfuckers that are taller than you?”
“Man, just tackle that big ass nigga.”
“Language, Santiago!” the manager shouted.
“My fault, Ralph,” he said. “I don’t know how y’all do out here in this country ass town, but I’d have just beat his ass right there. You catch a couple days at home for it but bet he won’t fuck with you no more.”
“And if he kicked my ass?”
“You don’t have to be negative about it. Like I said, just tackle him then his long ass arms won’t matter. You know how to tackle motherfuckers, right?”
“I think you are underestimating this. Or overestimating my ability to fight.”
Devin straightened out the stack of cases that he’d made on the cart before returning to the pallet, but Ralph, the manager stopped him.
He nodded to a pallet jack near the door. “Roll that water on that jack up to the aisle. They’re going to have some buggy boy put it up. Bring the jack back.”
Devin sighed and trudged over to the pallet jack. Looking over his shoulder to make sure there were no customers behind him, he grabbed the handle and rolled the pallet jack out of the doors and up to the front of the store where the water aisle was.
On the aisle, a cashier was pointing out what brands needed to be refilled to a bag boy. The girl looked at him as he dropped the pallet in the middle of the aisle. To say she looked angry would’ve been an understatement.
“You’re helping him, right?” she asked Devin.
“No…” Devin paused, leaning forward to look at her name tag. “Gina, I’m not helping him. I guess you are since you’re here.” He looked at the bag boy and yanked the jack from under the wooden pallet. “All yours, man.”
On the way back to the warehouse, Devin passed Hasan pulling a cart out to an aisle for the items to be stocked.
“Any of the pretty cashiers here tonight?” Hasan asked.
“Considering we got hired together, can you at least make an effort to not get us fired at the same time by trying to fuck all the cashiers?”
Hasan laughed as he turned down an aisle. “I ain’t promising that.”