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'Plays with what pretty good,' I said, and Franny kicked me under the table. Frank sat sullen and larger than any of us, dangerously close to Franny and across from me.

'De Meo is at least fast,' Father said.

'De Meo is at least a hitter,' Coach Bob said.

'He sure is,' Frank said; Frank had been hit by Ralph De Meo several times.

It was Franny who protected me from Ralph. One day when we were watching them paint the yard-line stripes on the football field -- just Franny and I; we were hiding from Frank (we were often hiding from Frank) -- De Meo came up to us and pushed me into the blocking sled. He was wearing his scrimmage uniform: shit and death Number 19 (his age). He took his helmet off and spit his mouthpiece out across the cinder track, letting his teeth gleam at Franny. 'Beat it,' he said to me, still looking at Franny. 'I got to talk to your sister in the worst way.'

'You don't have to push him,' Franny said.

'She's only twelve,' I said.

'Beat it,' De Meo said.

'You don't have to push him,' Franny told De Meo. 'He's only eleven.'

'I got to tell you how sorry I am,' De Meo said to her. 'I won't still be here by the time you're a student. I'll be graduated already.'

'What do you mean?' Franny said.

They're going to take in girls,' De Meo said.

'I know,' Franny said. 'So what?'

'So, it's a pity, that's all,' he told her, 'that I won't be here by the time you're finally old enough.'

Franny shrugged; it was Mother's shrug -- independent and pretty. I picked De Meo's mouthpiece up from the cinder track; it was slimy and gritty and I tossed it at him.

'Why don't you put that back in your mouth?' I asked him. I could run fast, but I didn't think I could run faster than Ralph De Meo.

'Beat it,' he said; he zipped the mouthpiece at my head, but I ducked. It sailed away somewhere.

'How come you're not scrimmaging,' Franny asked him. Behind the grey wooden bleachers that passed for the Dairy School 'stadium' was the practice field where we could hear the shoulder pads and helmets tapping.

'I got a groin injury,' De Meo told Franny. 'Want to see it?'

'I hope it falls off,' I said.

'I can catch you, Johnny,' he said, still looking at Franny. Nobody called me 'Johnny.'

'Not with a groin injury you can't,' I said.

I was wrong; he caught me at the forty-yard line and pushed my face in the fresh lime painted on the field. He was kneeling on my back when I heard him exhale sharply and he slumped off me and lay on his side on the cinder track.

'Jesus,' he said, in a soft little voice. Franny had grabbed the tin cup in his jock strap and twisted its edges into his private parts, which is what we called them in those days.

We both could outrun him, then.

'How'd you know about it?' I asked her. The thing in his jock strap? I mean, the cup.'

'He showed me, another time,' she said grimly.

We lay still in the pine needles in the deep woods behind the practice field; we could hear Coach Bob's whistle and the contact, but we were hidden from all of them.

Franny never minded when Ralph De Meo beat up Frank, and I asked her why she minded when Ralph beat up me.

'You're not Frank,' she whispered fiercely; she wet her skirt in the damp grass at the edge of the woods and wiped the lime off my face with it, rolling up the hem of her skirt so that her belly was bare. A pine needle stuck to her stomach and I picked it off for her.