we’d brought—“either R or W. Then, if I wrote R and you give me the right answer, Paul’s gonna cut through a little bit of rope with this.” He leaned forward and lifted his pants leg, and strapped to his ankle was a leather sheath. He’d told me we’d have a knife, but I hadn’t quite expected this lethal-looking thing. It was a dagger. As Marty lifted it out carelessly, using the same hand holding his cigarette, the late afternoon sun caught the metal and it sent this ray of light shooting toward me.
Marty went on. “If I wrote W and you give the right answer”—here he stood up and moved back over to Anthony—“I’m gonna cut away some part of your clothes.” He put the cig between his lips and tossed the dagger into the air. Anthony’s eyes followed it. Marty caught it and then plucked the cig out of his mouth. “In case you haven’t got the full picture,” he said, “if I wrote R and you give me the wrong answer, it’s your clothes, not the rope. Got it?”
Anthony’s eyes were locked on to Marty’s. He nodded shakily, but he nodded.
Back on the ground next to me, Marty picked up the book. And he took his time browsing for just the right question. Cig back in his mouth, he ran the forefinger of his right hand down page after page, all the while toying with the dagger in his left hand. Finally he slammed the book shut and stabbed the dagger into dirt. “We don’t need this,” he mumbled. He picked up the pen, leaned over the pad where it rested between us on the ground, wrote “R,” and asked Anthony, “What’s one plus one?” He tossed the book aside.
Marty was right; we didn’t need the book. The joke was going to be that Anthony had to guess whether Marty wanted the right answer or a wrong one. And, even more, it was a test to see if Anthony could bring himself to give a wrong answer to a math question.
Anthony was making a kind of squealing whining noise, like he couldn’t stand the strain. Marty grabbed the dagger and stood in front of him again. “Is that calculation too tough for you, whiz kid? Y’know, my grandparents were German. There’s a German word for kids like you. Wunderkind.”
Anthony stopped whining. He took a couple of rasping breaths and said, “Wunderkind.” He was correcting Marty’s pronunciation, so the W sounded like a V, and the d on the end sounded like a t. “It’s Wunderkind.”
Did this kid have a death wish? Marty balanced the lit cigarette between his lips and tossed the dagger from one hand to the other a few times, dangerously close to Anthony’s nose. Then, around the cigarette, he said, “That wasn’t the question, asshole. Just for that, you lose a sleeve.”
With his left hand he pinched up a layer of cloth at Anthony’s left shoulder, sliced through it, and then started to carve through the cloth. He pulled Anthony forward so he could cut behind him, the ropes cutting into skin from the pressure. Then Marty sliced slowly down the sleeve, inch by inch, toward the hem. Thank God it was a short sleeve, or I’m not sure Anthony could have taken it. He kept squinting his eyes tight shut, and then opening them wide to watch Marty’s progress, then squinting them shut again, all the while trying not to cough from Marty’s smoke—probably terrified that a cough would cause Marty to cut skin.
Marty held the cut sleeve remnant in front of Anthony’s face, then put it over his nose, and said, “Blow.” There was panic on the poor kid’s face by now, like he was afraid Marty was gonna suffocate him, and he just stared wildly.
“Blow your fucking nose, crybaby!”
Anthony did what he could, but he was having trouble getting his breath. When Marty was satisfied, he pulled the cloth away, laid it on top of Anthony’s head, and rubbed the snot into his hair. Marty left the cloth there, a corner covering one of Anthony’s eyes.
Back on the ground again, dagger stabbed into dirt and cigarette in his left hand, Marty resumed his role as inquisitor. “Now, Wunderkind,” he said, pronouncing it the same way he had the first time, “what’s the answer?”
Anthony whimpered, sobbed once or twice, and finally whispered, “Two.”
“Eh? Speak up, Tony. I can’t hear you. What was that you said?”
Anthony tried to take a deep breath and obviously failed, but he managed to say, “Two,” a little louder.
Marty sat back, took another puff of the cig, observed Anthony for several seconds, and then slowly reached for the dagger. After he’d dragged out the suspense as long as he could, he handed the dagger to me. “You know what you have to do.”
Now, Marty had written “R” before he asked this, so I knew I was to cut some rope. I also knew that Marty was trying to make Anthony think he’d made the wrong choice and that Marty had decided to give me the honor of cutting more clothing. But I wasn’t in the mood for delaying agony, so I was going to cut Anthony’s right hand loose.
Before I got close to the rope, though, Marty called to me, “Not all of it, Paul. Just cut maybe an eighth of the way through. After all,” and his voice was silky, “we seem to have more clothing than we have ropes. We want to be fair, don’t we?”
Marty had written “R” again before I sat down, and he called out, “What’s one plus two?”
Anthony gritted his teeth, probably feeling a little encouraged that Marty had kept his word on that last one and had cut rope. But the secret wasn’t in the right answer. It was in the right choice. “Five.”
I looked at Marty, whose face was pursed into fake disappointment. “Oh, Tony. Too bad, kid.” Marty stubbed his cig out in the dirt, reclaimed the dagger from me, and moved slowly over to the tree. Anthony looked anxious but not terrified, which was probably too bad for him. Marty stared at his face, then squatted down in front of him.
“No!” Anthony found his voice. His head jerked, and the snotty sleeve fell to the ground.
“Ha!” Marty shouted. “Wrong answer again!” He grabbed a handful of cloth right over Anthony’s groin, and the gasp I heard told me that Marty had also grabbed a handful of flesh. Very, um, sensitive flesh. He pinched his fingers together hard, working the cloth slowly away from what was undoubtedly Anthony’s dick, and then he lifted the dagger.
Anthony wasn’t whimpering any longer. He was crying, now, crying out, sobbing and begging. “Please! Please don’t! Stop it! What do you want?”
And to my surprise, Marty stopped. He let go of Anthony, lowered the arm with the dagger, and stood up. “You’re hard as metal in there, Tony. Do you know that? Your puny little dick is all excited. I think it’s enjoying this.”
Anthony’s eyes widened and his mouth hung open. “No!” was all he could say. “No!”
“Oh, but I think it is. Just look.” Marty stepped back and to one side. “Paul, do you see that?”
And Marty was right. Anthony had a boner. There was no denying it. Marty leaned toward him. “Tony? Is there something you haven’t told us?” Anthony just shook his head, desperate to understand, probably willing to do anything Marty said if it would get him out of this. “Oh, I think there is.” Marty reached forward and with the flat side of the dagger he slapped a few times at Anthony’s boner. Anthony flinched with every touch. Then Marty worked the blade up and down, sliding over the bulge and along the fly, then picked at the edge of the cloth with the metal point.
I can only imagine what Anthony was going through. But I’d had enough. “Look, Marty, I think we’ve got what we wanted.” Marty turned to look at me, and I got a hint of what he’d been boring into Anthony. It scared the shit out of me. But I couldn’t let this go on. “Just shove the snot rag down his back and we’ll cut him loose. We can dump him someplace he can walk home from.” I was having trouble breathing, praying it didn’t show. Praying Marty wouldn’t realize how scared I was.
“What was it we wanted, Paul? What have we got now?” I hated the tone of his voice.
I shrugged, trying once more to look casual. “Humiliate him. Take him down a peg. Show him that just because he’s smart doesn’t mean he’s invincible.