| |
Rock War
By
Taelur Kim
We told her not come but she wouldn’t listen, so we tried to leave her behind. First we tried to trap her in the bathroom but she knew how to undo the lock, so one of us had to stand there and hold the door; we wound up letting her out because no one wanted to stay behind to make sure she couldn’t follow us. Then we tried to ditch her by running down the street as fast as we could but she was fast herself and managed to catch up. So we tried pushing her down and threatening her but she just got right back up again because she knew we couldn’t do anything really bad. We finally tried to bribe her with ice cream and candy but she just shook her head and said the only thing she wanted was to come along; that’s how she was, always wanting to do boy things even though there were other girls she could have played with instead. We stood our ground and told her no because we were going to war and war was no place for a girl.
Why isn’t it, she asked and we just shook our head. See, that’s why we didn’t want her to come: girls didn’t understand about things like how serious war was.
We tried to explain to her that it wouldn’t be something fun like a mud fight or anything like that. A mud fight was okay for girls because the point wasn’t to try and hurt anyone: you were just trying to get them dirty and maybe get some mud up their nose. But we were going to a rock war and that was different because everyone was looking to hit you on the head and you were looking to do the same thing back. They never lasted long because things got scary fast but you had to hang in because whoever ran away first lost. That’s why we didn’t want her to come: we thought she’d get scared and start running and in a rock war, it only took one person running before everybody did it. So we tried one last time to get her to go back but she wouldn’t.
I promise, she said. I promise I won’t run. On my life. And she crossed her heart, hope to die, stick a needle in her eye.
That’s not good enough, we told her. You have to promise promise.
How do you do that, she asked.
You got to spit in your hand and shake to seal the deal, we said, thinking she wouldn’t want to do that because girls were scared of doing things like spitting. But she wasn’t. She promised that she wouldn’t run, spit right into her palm and reached out to shake. We tried to warn her one last time but she wouldn’t listen. We also listed all the bad things we would do to her if she broke her promise but she didn’t care, so we shook on it and that was that. We took her to war.
First, we let her follow us into the woods where we stopped at the swimming hole to load up our pockets with rocks. We started hunting for the right sort of rocks; you couldn’t just take any one, we told her, not if you wanted to win. They had to be the right size and shape: small and flat, like the kind that was good for skipping on the water. This was her first rock war so we didn’t think she’d pick any good ones but she scouted around like everyone else, pretending like she knew what she was doing. She finally came back with a handful but they were all wrong.
These are too big and these are too round, we told her. We made her drop them and go back for another handful, but they were all wrong too. This was why we didn’t want her to come: girls couldn’t even do something simple like pick out a proper rock. We finally gave up and chose her rocks for her. When our pockets were full, we walked down to the abandoned field that everyone had agreed on the day before as the meeting place. The enemy was already there, waiting for us.
Why’d you bring her, they asked as soon as they saw us.
That’s our business, we said, even though we were wondering the same thing.
You can’t have a girl on your side, they said. That’s cheating.
No it’s not, we shouted.
Yes it is, they shouted back.
We argued about it for a while, yelling about why it was and wasn’t cheating to have a girl on your side. We knew they were right, though: it was cheating. They wouldn’t be able to throw as hard as they wanted because they’d be too scared of hurting her. We tried to argue that it evened out because she couldn’t throw as hard or as far because everyone knows girls have weak arms but they won out in the end.
We won’t fight unless she goes, they said.
But she swore, we told them, so it’s okay.
What did she swear on, they asked.
Her life, we told them.
The enemy huddled up and talked about it in secret for a while. She’s gotta swear with us, they finally said. And she has to double swear that she won’t go tell on anybody if she gets hurt.
We got into a huddle of our own but we didn’t have to talk about it long. We knew they were right, and it was smart to make her swear that she wouldn’t tell, so we said fine and we made her spit into her hand and shake with everyone again. Now she’s one of us, we said, and the enemy agreed.
So we got on with the war. We walked away to our side of the field and got ready; there was a big log on our side that we decided to use as a fox hole. We all got down on our stomachs and peered over the log to where the enemy was; they’d found a fox hole of their own and they were staring right back at us.
In a rock war, you always threw your best rock first because you might not get the chance to throw a second. The thing you also had to remember to do was to keep your head down, so you had to throw and duck, throw and duck, just like that. That’s what we were telling her right before the war got started. Throw and duck, and she nodded like she had done it all her life, which she hadn’t. We also reminded her not to run: no matter what happened, no matter how scared she got, we warned her not to run because if you ran, that meant you lost.
I won’t run, she said, and even though she promised, we didn’t really believe her.
Are you ready, the enemy shouted out.
We’re ready, we shouted back. Are you ready?
And they were. So everyone counted out to three real loud, and then we started throwing. Rocks started flying back and forth everywhere. They flew over our head and hit our log like bullets. We were all throwing and ducking like professionals and the war was going really well when someone suddenly started yelling, “Time out, time out,” and everything just came to a stop. The field got real quiet and we all looked around wondering what the deal was. Someone pointed and said, “Man down,” which was our code word for when someone got hurt bad enough that we had to stop and make sure they were okay. Even before we looked we knew who it would be and this was why we didn’t want her to come: girls were always getting hurt. There was blood dripping down her face from a small cut on the right side of her head that she must’ve gotten from not keeping her head down like we told her to. We could see her lips quivering but she acted pretty tough and she kept her promise that she wouldn’t cry.
By then, the enemy had come out of their hiding place and crossed over to see what the matter was; they weren’t worried that it was a trick because a time out meant that no rocks could be thrown and that was a rule that we would ever break.
She’s out, they said when they saw the cut.
We know, we said. In a rock war, if you got hurt bad enough to bleed, you had to go sit it out until it was over. That was one of the rules. Everybody knew it but when we told her to go and wait until everything was over, she said no, I don’t want to.
We all started giving her hell for it, yelling and telling her to go sit down so we could get back to fighting but she stood her ground and yelled right back.
That’s not fair, she said. You never told me that that was one of the rules.
Everybody knows it, we told her, but she wouldn’t listen. She rubbed her sleeve against the cut and said, I’m not bleeding any more but that wasn’t the point and we let her know it. Even the enemy got into it because, although we were at war, we could at least agree about that one thing. We finally got tired of arguing so we grabbed her by the arm and pushed her down.
Go home, we yelled at her. You’re just a stupid girl and we didn’t want you here in the first place.
We all thought she would go off running with us yelling at her like that but she didn’t; instead, she got up, pulled a rock from her pocket and threw it at us. She missed but she took us by surprise and we all jumped back. None of us knew what to do then. She had thrown a rock during a timeout and that meant we had to punish her; if she had been a boy, we would’ve given her an indian burn or a pink belly but she was a girl, so we couldn’t do anything like that. We were also scared because we didn’t know what she was capable of; if she could break one rule, that meant she could break them all.
We were having what they called in the movies a showdown but instead of it being a fair match, we were sitting ducks. She must have figured out that we couldn’t do anything to her, or else, it was what she had planned all along and we could tell she was enjoying it, being in charge for a change. She got out another rock and started pointing it at us like she couldn’t decide who to hit first.
You better put that away, we warned her.
Or else what, she asked, and that was a question we didn’t have an answer to.
You made a promise, we reminded her.
I kept my promise, she shouted. I didn’t run and I didn’t tell. And you said I was one of you, so you’re the one who broke your promise.
She suddenly pulled her arm back and we didn’t know who she was aiming at so that sent everyone running. We cleared out of there as fast as we could, us and the enemy, and it didn’t matter that we had been at war before: we were all on the same team then and we all had the same goal, which was to get away before we got hit on the head. We left the field and scattered into the woods, flinching because we were sure that a rock was going to get us at any second. When we got far away enough, we stopped to catch our breath. We were pretty mad about what she’d done, so we started yelling things at her; if an adult had been there to hear, we would have all gotten in a ton of trouble. We weren’t expecting an answer back but we heard her shouting something and it didn’t take us long to figure out what she was saying.
What she was saying was this: you lose, you lose, you ran away first and in a rock war, that means you lose.
We all knew what she was getting at and none of us liked it. We knew she had cheated and broken the rules so her winning didn’t count but her acting like it did was somehow enough. The enemy separated themselves from us and started to walk back to where they’d come from.
Why’d you bring her, they asked us, but we didn’t have an answer for that. There was nothing left to do but go home ourselves, so we started emptying our pockets, letting the rocks fall from our pants and onto the ground, thinking that this was exactly the reason why we didn’t want her to come in the first place.
Copyright © 2007 Taelur Kim
|
