It was news to me that combover ever lacked prominence — it seemed so obviously to be the right word — but Flowers paid endless attention to words so I came to believe him, plus the motive he’d described for men sporting combovers seemed to be right for Monitor Botha, who was always trickling. Regardless of the motives behind Botha’s overcombing, though, you’d think he’d be one of the last guys in the world to make fun of some underweight troubled kid’s hair. At least that’s what I’d have thought.
But Egon Marsh — his dad awaiting trial on charges of child-porn that Egon, of course, was rumored to have starred in; his older brother a tweeker, freshly kicked out of Stevenson High School for possession; his sister Mia autistic, also probably retarded, the only kid in the Cage who never once got stepped (I learned all of this a few weeks later from Benji, maybe three or four days after his epic progression ended, by which time Egon and Mia had both been removed from Aptakisic, removed from the town in which they’d grown up, removed from the custody of their suicidal mother who then committed suicide; all of the rest of Aptakisic, however, had known about Egon’s family for a while) — Egon Marsh was one skinny, troubled kid, and Botha made fun of his hair three times. At least three times. The three times I saw were on my first day at Aptakisic — the Tuesday following Labor Day weekend — and for all I knew, Botha’d picked on Egon before then, too.
I didn’t even know he was doing it til the third time. The first time, he sniffed at the air and he said, “Something smells rape in here!” And that was true. Something did smell ripe, and it was Egon’s hair, which was matted and oily and flecked with white bits. He was sitting right next to me, and Botha, at the time he announced that something smelled ripe, was standing a few feet away from our carrels, and because I was new, and I didn’t know Botha, and because I couldn’t imagine a teacher could be such a dickhead to a kid so openly, I figured he was genuinely puzzled by the source of the smell, and I remember I was worried that he and everyone else might think the smell was coming from me. Short of saying that the smell was Egon’s — which I wasn’t willing to do — I wasn’t able to figure out a way to make it clear it wasn’t mine til after the moment had already passed.
Then a couple minutes later, Botha returned. He did this thing where he acted like a happy bloodhound, sniffing at the air along the trail from his desk to our carrels. This time he said, “Something smells downright bleddy Marshy.” This got laughs from some of the students, and I got more worried they’d think I was the stinker — I didn’t get the joke; I didn’t know Egon’s name; I figured that Marshy must have been lower-cased, and that it was either Australian or Aptakisical vernacular for foul or gross—and I still thought Botha sincerely didn’t know the source of the smell, and I knew that I sincerely didn’t want to start my career at Aptakisic as the kid who smells, so in order to make it clear that the stink wasn’t mine, that it would stay if I left and that it wouldn’t follow me, I broke off the tip of the pencil I was using and asked for permission to go to the sharpener, which was fixed to the opposite wall of the Cage. Botha told me that normally he’d give me a step for talking without raising my hand first, but since this was my first day, he’d let the whole thing slide, just this once, if I would raise my hand, wait to get called on, and then ask properly. That Botha might be actively trying to humiliate me didn’t seem any more likely to me than did the possibility that he was purposely being a dickhead to Egon — I assumed the rules were really important to him, and that he was worried I didn’t understand them — so I did as suggested. I raised my hand and got called on and I asked for permission.
Botha assented.
I went to the sharpener, and just as I’d started to turn the handcrank, he yelled out, “Wait! Wait, Mr. Makebee! No need to waste your affort. I think I’ve found a writing implement here — yes. Look. Right here in this nest!” And he made as if to pull a pen that he’d hidden inside of his sleeve from out of Egon’s hair. He waved the pen around.
A lot of kids laughed. The teachers tried not to. And Botha was laughing. He was looking at me, trying to get me to laugh, and I was looking at Egon, whose lips pursed and slacked as he tried to force a smile that just wouldn’t take. I didn’t know what to do.
Nakamook did. He stood at his carrel. “Combover,” he said.
The volume of the laughter instantly doubled.
And this was the beginning of the epic progression.
Botha stepped Benji once for not facing forward, and a second time for speaking without having been called on.
Benji said, “Combover.”
The laughter got louder, and continued getting louder each of the six times the word was repeated, and the volume, I’m sure, would have gotten higher yet, but before he could name the hairstyle a seventh time, Benji got an ISS and was sent to Brodsky.
When he came back from Brodsky the following period, he wrote the word COMBOVER on three sheets of paper and taped them to the walls of his carrel. We cracked up even harder than we had before, and Botha tore the three COMBOVERs down. Again Benji got an ISS; again he got sent to Brodsky.
When he returned from Brodsky’s that second time, he drew an anterior, a posterior, a sinistral, a dextral, and a bird’s-eye view of Botha’s head, and then he taped each to the walls of his carrel. After we fell from our chairs with laughter, and Botha tore all of the drawings down, Benji left the Cage with an OSS, and Brodsky sent him to Bonnie Wilkes, PsyD, to cool his heels for the rest of the day.
Wednesday, Benji served his second ISS.****
Wednesday also happened to be the last anyone at Aptakisic saw of the Marshes; that night, their suicidal mother was arrested for colluding with their father, the child pornographer, and Egon and Mia were taken into foster care nowhere nearby.
Thursday, Benji served OSS.
Thursday evening, Vincie Portite got hold of his dad’s electric clippers, and Friday morning Benji returned to the Cage with an actual combover, greased-down strands and everything. This time, there wasn’t just laughter. No one could take their eyes off Benji. Half the Cage got detentions for breaking the Face Forward rule, and Botha finally sent Nakamook to Brodsky, who called on Bonnie Wilkes again. They decided they couldn’t step kids for haircuts, no matter how ridiculous, but they did get hold of Nakamook’s mom, who left her job and picked him up.
On Monday he had a scrape on his chin, a yellow swelling along the orbit of his bloodshot right eye, and his head was shaved completely bald. I saw him in the hallway before first period.
“Newkid,” he said, “I forgot my Darker — left it in yesterday’s jeans.” It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me.
In the bathroom, I drew, with my 12-guage RoughWriter DarkerWider Permanent, a U-shaped sequence of Charlie-Brownish black W’s around Benji’s scalp, then four squiggled lines across the crown. When Botha sent Benji to the Office this time, Brodsky threw his arms up, called Benji’s mom, and sent him straight back to the Cage.