Your feets too big,

I really hates you ’cause your feets too big …

I had tried to push Cal out of my mind after he hadn’t shown up with the uniforms, and thought I had. Now, when I saw him, everything just jumped up in me, and I felt I couldn’t control myself. He had a big box in his arms, and he put it down on the bench we used for a desk and started opening it. Maybe they were talking, I don’t know.

I felt myself getting up and knew I was yelling at Cal, calling him names, asking him where the hell he had been. It was like seeing a movie. Walter and Paul turned and looked at me. Cal reaching slowly into the box and pulling out a uniform and handing it to me, then the uniform flying across the room. I reached in the back of the locker and got that old .32 pistol. Walter and Paul were yelling at me, and all the time Cal was standing there next to the uniforms. I was still screaming and half crying as Paul reached for the gun. He tried to push it down, and I tried to get it back up. I had both hands on it when it went off.

I thought I had shot my hand off. The pain went up my arm like somebody was running an iron up my veins. I fell back and squeezed my fingers together the best I could. I started to look at it but turned away when I saw the blood.

I heard myself screaming from the pain and cursing from the anger that was almost as bad as the pain. I fell to the floor, still holding my hand, and Paul and Walter were holding me. Cal got a bottle of whiskey and poured some of that on the place I had shot myself. It hurt as much as the shot did. I tried to fight my way up, but they held me down. I heard Cal tell Paul and Walter to leave. When they left, Cal took some bandages and tapes, stuff we used to tape our ankles when we played, and started bandaging my hand.

“It don’t look so bad,” he said. “You didn’t get no bone. The way you was hollering I thought you had shot your finger off or something. No, all you got here is a lot of hurt.”

He finished bandaging the hand and then sat down. Paul had been drinking a soda, and Cal sniffed it and then drank it. I was still breathing hard, like I had been running or something, and didn’t say nothing until I had caught my breath good.

“I should have blown your butt away,” I said.

“It’s a wonder that piece of gun didn’t blow your hand away.”

“Where you been?”

“Looking around to see if I could find myself,” Cal said.

“What bottle you look in?” I asked.

“Where we been don’t matter so much as where we are now, do it?” He stood up and held up one of the uniforms. “And where I am right now is here with the uniforms and a place for us to practice starting tomorrow. You know where Lincoln Center is?”