Spread-Eagle Lesson
I owe it all to Mr. Rainer -- and Freddie Bartholomew, of course. Not the old movie child actor Freddie Bartholomew, but the sissy wimp I bullied in the eighth grade whose parents dumped that name on him.
My body grew faster than my brain back then, I guess. Ninth grade might have been the stupidest year of my life. I was bigger than a lot of boys my age -- not just big, but strong. The football coach wanted me, but as soon as he saw how -- what an asshole I was basically, I was out of athletics. In those days, girls took "Home Economics" and boys took shop classes -- Wood Shop, Car Shop, Metal Shop -- and I wound up in Mr. Rainer's Metal Shop class, along with Freddie. I have no idea what administrative lunacy put Freddie in Metal Shop, but there was a lot of that sort of lunacy back then. For instance, if a Black kid had been one-tenth as much of a troublemaker as I was, he'd have been out of school in a snap!
My dad was thrilled I was in Metal Shop. He worked as the night manager at a local plant that made jar lids, and his dream, I guess, was that I would take over his job someday. Or something like that. We didn't talk much, since he slept most days.
Shop class was a little dangerous, I guess. We had flame-heated soldering irons, and big metal-benders and heavy-duty saws and drills and shit, so Mr. Rainer ran a pretty tight class, which meant I had lots of opportunities to get into trouble. When Mr. Rainer introduced us to the brake bender and said it made "it easier to bend metal" I elbowed Freddie. "Not easy enough for you, sissy!"
I guess I said it too loud, because Mr. Rainer looked at me and snapped, "That's one, Trumbull!" and this little shiver went through me.
Another time, I yanked my soldering iron out of the flame and sort of accidentally swung it too close to Freddie, who yelled, "Watch it!" Mr. Rainer came right over, glaring at me. "What happened, Fred?" He always called Freddie "Fred," for some reason.
"N-nothing, Mr. Rainer. I just got startled!"
"By what?" Mr. Rainer growled, still glaring at me.
"I -- I guess I thought Butch's, um, soldering thing was too close. Or something."
"Soldering iron, Dope!" I snapped.
"That's two, Trumbull!" Mr. Rainer growled. Then he turned to Freddie and smiled. "Good reflexes, Fred."
I don't know what it was, really. I mean yeah, I could have put Freddie Bartholomew in the hospital with one hand tied behind my back. Even both hands, maybe. I didn't hate him, though. It wasn't anything like that. He was just a target, you know? I poked, he jumped. He made me feel, I don't know, powerful maybe. Like I said, my brain wasn't up to speed in the ninth grade. In the eighth grade, I even gave him a bloody nose, once. I don't even remember how!
Anyhow, after the soldering iron incident, Mr. Rainer's eyes were on me all the time. Even something as simple as clamping pipe in a vise and attacking the end with a pipe threader, he'd measure the threading to be sure I hadn't gone too far or not far enough, and if I screwed up even a little, he'd gather the whole class around to show them my mistake. "Metalwork is about precision, gentlemen!" (He almost always called us gentlemen.)"Not dumb muscle!" So that was me: Dumb Muscle. And it really was me, because I was so proud about "muscle" that "dumb" didn't even register! Instead, I flexed my arms and grinned. I'm pretty sure he didn't see me, or things would have happened a lot sooner.
What happened was we had to make bird houses. I don't know what it was about bird houses back then: the guys in Wood Shop had to make them, too. I'm surprised the Car Shop guys didn't have to make bird cars, or something. Anyhow, we started by making little boxes, like for nuts and bolts or loose parts. There were lots of really bad jokes about "nut boxes." It was mostly metal scribing and bending and soldering the seams. Pretty simple, really. Mr. Rainer even said I'd done a good job!
But the bird houses were trickier. There was no plan to follow, for example. There were some sample houses Mr. Rainer showed us, from previous classes. "I bought the best ones, gentlemen," he explained, "so you guys would know what to shoot for." Even Dumb Muscle me caught the hint behind "bought"! Some of the houses in the collection had little windows, or fancy roofs, and there were no sharp edges anywhere. I still don't think birds would want to live in them, but that wasn't the point. It was about details, and planning and precision, definitely not Dumb Muscle's talents.
So I leaned on Freddie. I told him I'd do the work if he'd come up with a plan for the house and scribe the metal. Told him I'd even do the work on his house! Looking back, I think he was too scared to say no. The plans he came up with weren't easy, but he also figured out the "how" parts, mostly. I just had to bend and pound and file and solder exactly right. We worked hard, but just about when we were supposed to finish up, he found a messy inside seam, and it was too late to fix it. "You dumb -- look at that! You could cut your finger off!" he yelled.
Freddie Bartholomew had yelled at Butch Trumbull! And Butch Trumbull would have put Freddie in the hospital right then if Mr. Rainer hadn't caught my arm. "That's three, Trumbull!" And the whole class just sort of fell back as he dragged me across the room to an empty shop table.
The shop tables were these big square metal things with a metalworking vise mounted at each corner, so four guys could work at each table. Mr. Rainer put me down on the table on my back and grabbed one arm and put it in one of the vises. In the wide, notched part for clamping pipe below the jaws, actually, so he could close it around my wrist without crushing it. He got my other hand into another vise, and then used the last two to clamp my pants. I didn't want to even try to pull my hands out of those rough notches. I did think I might be able to rip my pants, but they were jeans, and jeans don't rip easy. Then, Mr. Rainer tightened my belt, to be sure I couldn't wriggle out of my pants, and then he grabbed his desk chair and set it right over my gut.
"All right!" he announced, climbing onto the table. "Line up and show me your work, gentlemen!" One by one, the guys in the class came up to the table, and he rolled his chair up and down over my stomach and chest, "accidentally" putting his feet on my body now and then to maneuver. When Freddie came up with two houses, he asked which one was mine. He studied Freddie's first, and announced that it was excellent. And then he studied mine. "Here's a good example of what happens if you don't plan your work, gentlemen. This bad seam could cut!" And he dropped the damn thing right on my helpless crotch. I yelped and the birdhouse rolled between my legs. Mr. Rainer kicked it off the table, and managed to hit my crotch with the heel of his shoe. "All right, gentlemen, let's get things cleaned up and put away! You two!" He pointed to a couple of guys. "Put my chair back at the desk!" The guys went to work with the usual end-of-class stuff while Mr. Rainer strode around the table above me supervising, and "helping" with the damn chair. "No lollygagging, gentlemen. Put everything it its proper place!" And he gave me a long look and I dropped my eyes.
Mr. Rainer was bigger than me and I knew it. But from my place spreadeagled flat on my back on that table, he looked immense. Even his heavy black oxfords looked huge. His head looked like it could scrape the ceiling, I could see the bulge of his chest under his shirt, and his short sleeves were tight against the muscles of his arms. Every once in a while he'd poke me with those shoes and look down at me and smile, maybe. I hoped it was a smile at least. I was actually scared, really scared, for the first time since I don't know when.
At last, the bell rang. Class was over. "Class dismissed, gentlemen!" I watched Mr. Rainer watch the other guys leave. Most of them sort of detoured toward the table to look at me. "He's dead," somebody whispered. When everyone else was gone, Mr. Rainer stood between my legs and slipped the toe of one shoe under my crotch. "Huh," he said. "Learned your lesson?"
"Yessir," I said.
He got off the table and slowly released me. "Being a bully doesn't make you a man," he said quietly. "You better shape up. Understand?"
"Yessir," I said again, but I was seething inside. I jumped off the table and hurried off to my next class, which would have been Social Studies. I don't remember what it was about though, because everything was tumbling around in my head, things I'd never even thought about before. I worked at the jar cap factory for the summer, and when I got back to school, I wasn't the biggest guy around anymore. And Freddie was in some sort of advanced placement program, so I didn't run into him. I guess that happens to a lot of people in high school.
I wonder where Freddie is. If he doesn't let me out of this cage, dinner's going to be ruined.