The poor thing gasped for air, chest heaving, tiny face wracked with pain. Once cute, perhaps even a pet, it was a long way from whatever comfort it had once known. It lay in a ditch, covered in filth, and it was clear that, while there were at present one too many mice in the world, the natural harmony of things was soon to be brought into balance.
Matt had something to say on the matter:
"Kill it!"
As best I know Matt had nothing against mice. He'd never mentioned being bitten by one, scratched by one, involved in a bar room brawl with one. All he saw was weakness, which he also saw in me.
Of the mouse's athletically-clad audience, I was the one least like the others; I was the one that didn't belong. I wasn't particularly athletic. I was about as coordinated as a spider on roller skates. I could hit a ball straight, but not in a predictable direction. When other boys performed bench presses their leg muscles surged under their skin like long, taut ropes; my own legs were as flat as a meadow pond on a windless day. When we played "shirts and skins" I showed up on Soviet satellite telemetry as a small earthbound sun.
The most dangerous thing to do in a timid child's world is to meet the eyes of a bully, and yet they are too seductive a thing to avoid easily. And as soon as my eyes met Matt's, he locked on me with all the delicacy and grace of a Stinger missile.
"Art can do it!"
Suddenly all eyes were upon me, a thing from which I usually shrank. In this case, though, there was something different. Normally I drew attention through some distinctive act of athletic incompetence, such as dribbling out-of-bounds or scoring a goal for the wrong team or hitting a home run into traffic directly behind home plate. But this... this was different. For once, all of my athletic, outgoing and popular peers believed that I, and I alone, could excel at this one thing.
Professional assassins are admired, no? It wasn't the kind of act that would start a world war or put a mouse's face on the dollar, but as an act of mercy... hmmm. Surely it would be a kindness, and as none of the others seemed up to the challenge then perhaps this was my unique destiny.
The chant started. "Art... Art... Art... Art..."
Someone handed me a bat, and Matt looked quite pleased with himself. Not a "I helped a fellow classmate find their manifest destiny, hurrah!" look but an "I'll bet he'll never do it" look. I decided to prove him wrong.
I looked at the mouse as a technical obstacle first. It wasn't moving, which fit my level of hand-eye coordination perfectly. A short swing would be more than enough, and if I missed it wouldn't be quite as catastrophic as missing a beheading (or so I assumed). But while sizing up my chances of success, and perhaps feeling that it was only a few short moments before I'd receive my first ever round of peer adulation, I noticed that the mouse was indeed suffering.
I was not a touchy-feely child. Sensitive, yes--but emotions were something to be held in check, and not experienced. For a moment, though, as I pondered taking the life of a living being larger than the ants that I toasted in the backyard with a magnifying glass, I felt something for the small, obviously suffering creature in front of me. There was a little creak, a door opened a crack, and I felt something akin to empathy. I felt sorry for this little guy, and maybe I could do some good by ending its pain.
The cheering crowd of peers was strictly gravy.
And there was a cheer, as I raised the bat to about waist level, as it dawned on my tormenters that I might actually do the deed. Matt looked especially pleased, and it seemed reasonable that he might--at any second--don a short skirt and spell my name with his arms. "Go Art, go Art, K-i-l-l-e-r Art..."
"Killer Art" had a nice ring to it, and without a further thought I swung the bat and sent Mr. Mouse to his destiny. I'm not sure what I expected--a chorus of angels, a solar eclipse, a team of Viking warriors setting the carcass adrift on a burning balsa-wood boat in the lap pool--but what I certainly didn't expect was for little Mickey to split open like a rotten sausage.
"EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" Not the response I was expecting from my classmates. I stood before them, charged with adrenaline, realizing with horror that I wasn't chosen for this task by the mob because it was my special talent, my bravery, or my sacred destiny to dispatch this small creature. They just wanted to see if they could make me do it--something they couldn't, or wouldn't, do themselves. I was somehow lessened further in their eyes for performing the act, even though I did it to their exact specifications.
They passed by me, one by one, as if I was the tail end of a royal reception line. "I can't believe you did that!" "Totally gross!" "You're sick, man!" One by one, they expressed their complete disdain and disgust at me doing exactly what they wanted me to do.
In the end, though, it was just me and the coach, standing under the warm spring sun on a lush green field in front of an exploded mouse.
"You did the right thing, kid," he said. "No one else would do it, but you did the right thing." He walked into the gym and I stood on the field for a while, basking in the responsibility of what I'd done. Matt had humiliated me, but he'd also made me slightly stronger. There was something in the world that I could do better than he, and it was more than being able to throw objects reliably at a specific point in space or run the fastest around a large chalked circle in the grass or toss a piece of inflated pork across a field. I could show mercy, I could do the hard thing, I could follow through. Matt might be able to win awards and get laid and be invited to a lot of parties, but for a brief moment I felt more... justifiably human.
I walked slowly back to the gym, secure in the knowledge that although I would surely have my ass kicked repeatedly throughout the balance of my high school years, no one would intentionally kill me. Not even mercifully. They didn't have the guts.
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