the unfortunate name of Mr. Fancy, in the ass when Fancy was bending over to gather the volleyballs into a canvas sack. Fancy had just called Croft a loser in front of the whole class. Take a good look, guys, he’d said, at what not to be if you want to achieve anything in this life other than a welfare cheque. And then Fancy made the unbelievable move of turning around to get the volleyballs and showing Croft his sinewy glutes. It was like, Croft is rumoured to have protested, the man was offering it up.
That was the effect Croft had on adults — he enraged them, moved them to say the kind of things you should never say to a sixteen-year-old kid, no matter how much he pisses you off. Men in particular he provoked to tantrums. Croft had flunked enough grades to be in a couple of classes with me and I remember the entire room sucking in its breath when a red-faced Geography teacher took hold of either side of Croft’s desk — with him in it — and yanked it with an effortlessness born of pure animal rage to the front of the classroom. When everyone was going around asking what had prompted Fancy to denounce Croft like that in the gym it turned out to be because Croft had forgotten his shorts at home. Which sounds like nothing, but we all understood how little the shorts would have had to do with it. What it had to do with was Croft’s attitude. Croft had a smirk that made you want to take hold of either side of his mouth and pull his face apart. It wasn’t a smirk like that of other punks. It was a smart smirk, and was usually accompanied by a smart remark. And when I say smart, I mean smart. Croft wasn’t your typical idiot punk like say his compadre Collie Chaisson who did time in the Youth Centre for putting his fist through a convenience store window and leaving a multitude of perfect, dried-blood fingerprints polka-dotting the cash register.
So it was no surprise that Croft would be the first to send my father lunging over the counter at Icy Dream, hands clenched to throttle and punch — simultaneously if at all possible. I will never forget that first time, grabbing Gord around the waist like a child and hoisting him backward as every muscle in his tiny body strained in the opposite direction. He actually had a boot on the counter at one point, but instead of using the leverage to launch himself at Croft, he was thwarted by me hauling him back at just the right moment and using the momentum against him. Croft was wide-eyed, having shot a good three feet back from the counter, skeezy smile quickly affixed to mask his shock. In his mind he was already sitting in some sweaty basement telling the story to Chaisson and his other dirtbag friends. Gordon Rankin man! Little fucker comes at me right over the fuckin counter man! Lost it. You goddamn punk! You little asshole! Like he can’t even talk he’s so pissed. Like in-co-her-ent with rage. So I’m ready to go right? Grown man coming straight at me, fuckit, he’s the one who’ll be charged, not me. I’m just a widdle kid. Lucky for him the gland-case comes to the rescue.
No one had ever called me a gland-case before I met Croft. I remember being a little shocked by it — the audacity. It wasn’t the kind of town where guys got mocked for being big. You got mocked for wearing colourful shirts, or using words with more than two syllables, but not for being big. Big was considered an achievement. Total strangers all but stopped me on the street and congratulated me on it. Croft was the first person to make me feel like a freak.
I remember walking by him at a dance. Croft started bouncing up and down and making earthquake noises. I glanced around and grinned to show I got the joke, but also to let him know I had heard the joke and to determine if it was the kind of joke that required me to walk over there and set a few things straight. Croft grinned back at me. Huge and chimp-like. At which point I stopped smiling, allowed myself to slow down a little, upon which Croft held his hands up in the air, all innocence and goodwill.