Just then an arm locked itself around my windpipe and there was a hand between my legs. I realised what was going to happen just a second too late to wholly prevent it. My balls were given a good, firm squeeze that sent sick pain bellowing and raving up from my crotch and into my stomach and down into my legs, unmanning them so that when the arm around my windpipe let go. I simply collapsed in a puddle on the smoking-area tarmac.
'How did you like that, dickface?' a squarish guy with bad teeth asked me. He was wearing small and rather delicate wire-frame glasses that looked absurd on his wide, blocky face. This was Moochie Welch, another of Buddy's friends.
Suddenly the circle of watchers began to melt away and I heard a man's voice yelling, 'Break it up! Break it up right now! You kids take a walk! Take a walk, dammit!'
It was Mr Casey. Finally, Mr Casey.
Buddy Repperton snatched his switchblade off the pavement. He retracted the blade and shoved the knife into the hip pocket of his jeans in one quick motion. His hand was scraped and bleeding, and it looked as if it was going to swell. The miserable sonofabitch, I hoped it would swell ,until it looked like one of those gloves Donald Duck wears in the funnypages.
Moochie Welch backed away from me, glanced toward the sound of Mr Casey's voice, and touched the corner of his mouth delicately with his thumb. 'Later, dickface,' he said.
Don Vandenberg was dancing more slowly now, but he was still rubbing the affected part. Tears of pain were spilling down his face
Then Arnie was beside me, getting an arm around me, helping me up. There was a lot of dirt smeared across his shirt from where Vandenberg had thrown him down. There were cigarette butts squashed into the knees of his jeans.
'You okay, Dennis? What'd he do to you?'
'Gave my balls a little squeeze. I'll be all right.'
At least I hoped I would be. If you're a man and you've slammed your nuts a good one at some point (and what man has not), you know. If you're a woman, you don't - can't. The initial agony is only the start; it fades, to be replaced by a dull, throbbing feeling of pressure that coils in the pit of the stomach. And what that feeling says is Hi, there! Good to be here, just sitting around in the pit of your stomach and making you feel like you're going to simultaneously blow lunch and shit your pants! I guess I'll just hang around for a while, okay? How does half an hour or so sound? Great! Getting your nuts squeezed is not one of life's great thrills.
Mr Casey shoved his wav through the loosening knot of spectators and took in the situation. He wasn't a big guy like Coach Puffer; he didn't even look particularly rugged. He was of medium height and age, and going bald. Big horn-rimmed glasses sat squarely on his face. He favoured plain white shirts - no tie - and he was wearing one of them now. He wasn't a big guy, but Mr Casey got respect. Nobody fucked around with him, because he wasn't afraid of kids deep down the way so many teachers are. The kids knew it, too. Buddy and Don and Moochie knew it; it was in the sullen way they dropped their eyes and shuffled their feet.
'Get lost,' Mr Casey said briskly to the few remaining spectators. They started to drift away. Moochie Welch decided to try and drift with them. 'Not you, Peter,' Mr Casey said.
'Aw, Mr Casey, I ain't been doing nothing,' Moochie said.
'Me neither,' Don said. 'How come you always pick on, us?'
Mr Casey came over to where I was still leaning on Arnie' for support. 'Are you all right, Dennis?'
I was finally beginning to get over it - I wouldn't have been if one of my thighs hadn't partially blocked Welch's hand. I nodded.
Mr Casey walked back to where Buddy Repperton, Moochie Welch, and Don Vandenberg stood in a shuffling, angry line. Don hadn't been joking; he had been speaking for all of them. They really did feel picked on.
'This is cute, isn't it?' Mr Casey said finally. 'Three on two. That the way you like to do things, Buddy? Those odds don't seem stacked enough for you.'
Buddy looked up, threw Casey a smouldering, ugly glance, and then dropped his