Ricky threw the ball as hard as he could. David had to jump and catch it backhanded. “Great catch!” said Ricky.
David started to throw the ball back to Ricky, but for a split second, instead of seeing his brother he saw the image of Mrs. Bayfield tipped over in her rocking chair with her legs up in the air and her black-and-white-striped underwear with red ruffles.
The ball sailed high over his brother’s head and way off to the left.
It shattered their parents’ bedroom window.
3
ELIZABETH said “ball.”
It actually sounded more like “baw,” but her mother knew what she meant. That was the reason David and Ricky didn’t get in trouble for breaking the window.
Elizabeth and her mother were sitting on the bedroom floor at the foot of the bed, reading Elizabeth’s favorite book.
“Mr. Duck and Mr. Goose
Went for a ride on the red caboose.”
“Gaboo!” said Elizabeth, her finger on the picture of the caboose.
At that moment the ball came crashing through the window, bounced and rolled across the bed, bounced on the floor, and landed in Elizabeth’s lap.
“Baw,” said Elizabeth as if it were a very common thing for a baseball to suddenly crash through the window and land in her lap. She picked it up and showed it to her mother.
It all happened so fast that by the time Mrs. Ballinger realized what had happened it was already clear that the danger was past and nobody was hurt. She just laughed.
“It was my fault,” said David, rushing into the room.
“I should have caught it,” said Ricky, right beside him.
“You couldn’t have caught that ball,” said David.
“I could too,” said Ricky.
Their mother and Elizabeth were laughing at each other.
“It’s my fault,” David repeated. “I’m the one who should get in trouble.”
“No one is in trouble,” their mother said. “Both of you please clean it up while I hold Elizabeth.”
“But Elizabeth could have been hurt,” said David.
His mother looked him right in the eye and said, “Yes, I know.”
The broken glass was confined to the bed. David and Ricky folded up the ends of the bedspread.
Their mother read to Elizabeth, “Mr. Goose and Mr. Duck went for a ride on the green dump truck.”
“Dum tugg!” said Elizabeth.
They lifted the bedspread off the bed.
“C’mon, Mr. Duck,” said David.
“Okay, Mr. Goose,” said Ricky.
IT DIDN’T seem right.
I should have gotten in trouble, David thought. It was my fault. I broke the window. And Elizabeth could have gotten hurt. What if the ball hit her on the head or a piece of glass got in her eye?
Besides, what kind of lesson was that for Ricky? He has to learn responsibility. If you do something wrong, even if it’s not on purpose, you still have to suffer the consequences.
I should have been punished, he thought.
4
SINCE THE second grade David had stopped by Scott’s house every morning on the way to school.
Scott’s mother answered the door with a cup of coffee in one hand and half a croissant hanging from her mouth. She looked at David like she was surprised to see him.
She pulled the croissant from her mouth. “Scott’s already left, Davey,” she said. “I assumed you were with him.”
David shrugged. “No big deal,” he said. Then, “Oh, that’s right!” as if he suddenly remembered something. “Scott had something he had to do this morning.”
Scott’s mother had the coffee cup to her lips, and he walked away quickly before she had time to ask him anything more about what Scott had to do this morning. For some reason he felt embarrassed in front of her, that her son hadn’t waited for him.
“Bye, Davey!” she called after him.
He waved with his back to her.
They had been Davey and Scotty until the fifth grade; then they became Dave and Scott. But Scott’s mother still called him Davey. He called her Sally.
Once, when he was in the third grade, they had spent half an hour crying in each other’s arms after they had seen a dog get run over by a jeep.
It was kind of funny, he thought now as he walked away, that he called Scott’s mother Sally but Scott he called Simpson.
When he got to school he saw Scott and Randy standing on either side of the door to the boys’ bathroom. He headed toward them unsure if he was their friend, but they were right on the way to his locker and he didn’t think he should have to go out of the way just to avoid them. Besides, he had helped them steal the cane. That proved he was their friend.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hey, Dave, how ya doin’?” asked Randy.
“Ballinger,” muttered Scott.
“Simpson,” said David.
“So what was it that she said to you after you gave her the bird?” asked Randy.
“The bird?” asked David.
“You know,” said Randy. Then, smiling, he gave David the finger.
David had never heard it called the bird before. “I don’t know,” he said. “She was just babbling. I mean, she could hardly talk with lemonade coming out of her nose.” He laughed.
Neither Scott nor Randy laughed.
“I don’t know, man,” said Randy. “It sounded like she put a curse on you.”
David smiled. “Yeah, right,” he said.
A boy with long sloppy hair and blue sunglasses approached the bathroom door.
Scott and Randy immediately blocked his path. “Bathroom’s closed,” said Scott.
The boy stood there a moment. David recognized him from Spanish class. His name was Larry Clarksdale. He had only been at the school a few weeks.
Larry chuckled as if it were some kind of a joke. “C’mon, let me through,” he said.
Scott and Randy didn’t budge.
“Can’t you read the sign on the door?” asked Randy.
There was no sign on the door.
“It says, ‘Closed for Repairs,’ ” said Scott.
Larry looked at David, or at least David thought he was looking at him. It was hard to tell where Larry was looking behind his blue sunglasses.
David shrugged.
Larry also shrugged, then turned and walked away, slowly at first, then very quickly.
Randy snickered.
“Go use the girls’ bathroom, pervert!” Scott shouted after him.
A moment later Roger stepped out of the bathroom. He laughed when he saw David.
David couldn’t tell if Roger was laughing at him or with him. He smiled.
“So, David, you want a smoke?” asked Randy. “We’ll stand guard.”
For a split second David actually considered it. “Uh, no, thanks,” he said. “Maybe later.”
He saw the look of disapproval on Scott’s face.
“What’d old Buttfield call you?” asked Roger. “A pimple-banger?”
“I don’t know,” David said with a shrug. “I gave her the bird,” he added, trying to sound tough.
“Big deal,” scoffed Roger. “She probably doesn’t even know what it means!”
Randy and Scott laughed.
So did David, for lack of anything else to do.
DAVID’S HOMEROOM was a combination social studies and English class. He tried to put everything but the Gettysburg Address out of his mind as he looked it over one last time. Ricky had helped him memorize it. Ricky had been very impressed that David could memorize all those big words. But the big words were easy. It was the little words that were hard; all the “to’s” and “for’s” and “a’s” and “the’s.”
Roger’s voice suddenly popped into his head. Big deal, he had said. She probably doesn’t even know what it means!
Roger had meant it as a put-down, but now as David thought about it, it made him feel better.
Maybe Mrs. Bayfield didn’t know what it
meant! If she didn’t know what it meant, then it wasn’t a bad thing for him to do. It would be no different than if he had pointed his elbow at her.
He wondered how long people had been giving the finger. Maybe they’d only been doing it a few years.
Who made it up? he wondered. Who decided it was a bad thing to do, and how did so many people find out about it?
He wondered if his parents knew what it meant. Maybe his father, he decided, but definitely not his mother. How could she? Somebody would have had to show it to her and tell her what it meant, and he couldn’t imagine that. And if his mother didn’t know what it meant, then Mrs. Bayfield probably didn’t either.
“Miss Williams,” said Mr. MacFarland.
David felt a pang, just as if Mr. MacFarland had said “Mr. Ballinger.”
“Are you prepared to recite the Gettysburg Address?” asked Mr. MacFarland.
“Except for the hat,” said Miss Williams.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Nothing.”
A lot of the kids thought Miss Williams was spacey, but David knew what she meant. She was making a joke. It was like she needed to wear a stovepipe hat in order to recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
She stood up. “Should I say it here, or do you want me to go to the front of the room?”
“Wherever you feel most comfortable, Miss Williams,” said Mr. MacFarland.
Miss Williams remained at her desk, standing very straight. She had long red hair, bright green eyes, and, thought David, just the right number of freckles.
He didn’t know how many freckles she had, but he knew it was just the right amount. He sometimes daydreamed about sitting beside her in a beautiful meadow and just counting her freckles.
He was glad that Mr. MacFarland had called on her, so he could stare at her without having to worry about being caught. He sat two rows to the left of her and one row back. If the classroom was a chessboard, he was a knight’s move away from her. If she was a queen and he was a knight, he could take her off on his next move.
She took a deep breath and began: “Fourscore and seven years ago our—”
“Stop!” commanded Mr. MacFarland.
She stared bravely at the teacher.
“Miss Williams, do you know what ‘Fourscore and seven years ago’ means?” he asked her.
“No,” she said very quietly.
“No,” he repeated. “Tell me this. How long did it take you to memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address?”
“I don’t know, about an hour.”
“You mean to tell me that you spent all that time saying the words, over and over again, and you don’t even know what they mean. Are you a robot?”
She pushed out one side of her face with her tongue.
“Do you own a dictionary, Miss Williams?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t it ever occur to you to look up the words in the dictionary?”
“I know what they mean separately,” she said. “Just not together.”
Mr. MacFarland turned toward the rest of the class. “Will someone please tell Miss Williams what the words mean together.”
Several kids raised their hands. David didn’t. He knew what “fourscore and seven” meant, but he wasn’t about to show her up.
“Mr. Schwartz.”
Jeremy Schwartz explained that a score was twenty, so that fourscore and seven equaled eighty-seven.
“Thank you,” said Mr. MacFarland. “Now tell us, Mr. Schwartz, why didn’t Lincoln just say eighty-seven? Why did he have to make it so complicated?”
“Maybe that’s just how people talked back then.”
“No, people said eighty-seven, just as they do today.” He turned back to Miss Williams, who was still standing. “Miss Williams, why do you think he said fourscore and seven instead of eighty-seven?”
“Because it sounds good,” she said meekly.
“Because it sounds good?” Mr. MacFarland repeated. Several kids snickered. “What do you mean, it sounds good.”
“It sort of rhymes.”
There were more snickers. David could hardly watch. He hated to see her ridiculed in front of the whole class.
“Do you mean to say,” continued Mr. MacFarland, “that on the site of the bloodiest battlefield in the Civil War, where there were more than forty thousand casualties, where brothers killed brothers, President Lincoln chose those words because they rhymed?”
Miss William’s face quivered.
Mr. MacFarland smiled. “Well, you’re absolutely correct,” he said.
David smiled.
“The Gettysburg Address is more than just a speech,” Mr. MacFarland told the class. “It is a piece of literature. It is a poem honoring the forty thousand young men killed or wounded. Mr. Lincoln came to that horrible site and spoke with dignity and grace. And now, Miss Williams, I’d like you to do the same. Recite the Gettysburg Address, but don’t just say the words. Feel them. Imagine you’re standing on that battlefield and speak with the dignity and grace befitting the occasion.” He smiled at her. “And you don’t even need a hat.”
Miss Williams smiled sheepishly. Then with her head held high and her green eyes flashing she spoke. “Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing …”
David closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and listened to her clear, brave voice.
“… We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do this.”
He opened his eyes to look at her again, but for a split second instead of Miss Williams he saw the face of Felicia Bayfield.
He toppled over in his chair.
Miss Williams stopped reciting. Several kids were laughing.
“Stay where you are, Mr. Ballinger,” ordered Mr. MacFarland.
“Huh?”
“Maybe this will teach you to sit like a human being. Please continue, Miss Williams.”
David felt like a bug as he lay on his back with his legs in the air while Miss Williams continued to recite.
“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who …”
David wondered if Mr. MacFarland knew what it meant to give someone the finger. He wondered if President Lincoln ever flipped anyone off.
“… that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
5
AT RECESS David hung out with Scott, Roger, Randy, and some other kids, including two girls—Leslie Gilroy and Ginger Rice. Even though he was just barely part of the group, it still felt good to be hanging out with the two most popular girls in the school. He sat on the edge of a planter with a fake smile plastered across his face.
Roger told the others how they had swiped Mrs. Bayfield’s snake cane.
“Her name’s Felicia!” said Scott. “Can you believe it? Felicia?”
They all laughed.
“Don’t get too close to David,” warned Roger. “She put a curse on him.”
“Really, David?” asked Ginger.
David smiled. “That’s right,” he said, trying to sound mysterious. “I’m cursed.”
“Yuck,” said Ginger.
After recess David had science. Science and math were his two best subjects. His father was a scientist. After science was shop.
Randy was in his shop class. David waved and said hi to him as he walked past Randy’s worktable.
Randy waved back and loudly called, “Hi, Dave!”
Another boy named Alvin whispered something to Randy, then they both laughed.
David continued on toward
his table at the other side of the room.
At the beginning of the year everyone had to sign up for either home economics or shop. There was no rule that boys had to take shop and girls had to take home ec. In fact, David shared his worktable with a girl.
But girls can get away with doing “boy” things a lot easier than boys can get away with doing “girl” things. Shop was David’s worst subject. He would have liked to have taken home ec. He knew he’d have to know how to cook some day. But he could just imagine what the other kids would have called him if he had signed up for home ec.
He was making a cheese board shaped like an apple. He had drawn a picture of it on his drafting paper, and now, slowly and carefully, he was trying to copy that picture onto a piece of maple wood.
Wham!
David’s pencil slipped as the girl next to him hammered a nail into the doghouse she was building.
David turned and watched her. She was short and skinny, with very short, straight black hair that hung like a bowl over her head. Her name was Maureen, but everyone called her Mo.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
He was fascinated by the way her skinny arms could wield the heavy hammer and pound in the nail all the way, with just three hits. The doghouse was almost bigger than she was.
He finished drawing the apple on his piece of wood. It didn’t look the same as his drafting paper drawing, but that didn’t matter. He knew he wouldn’t be able to cut it out along the lines anyway.
Wearing gloves and safety goggles, he cautiously approached the jig saw. He set the piece of wood on the metal plate and turned the switch. He tried to maneuver the wood so that the vibrating vertical blade stayed on the penciled outline of the apple. So far so good … perfect. “Nuts!”
He had cut the apple out perfectly, except he followed the wrong line at the top and accidentally cut off the apple’s stem. The stem was also supposed to be the handle of the cheese board.
Well, not all apples have stems, he consoled himself.
He returned to his worktable, took out his sheet of drafting paper, and erased the stem. He had learned early in the year that if he couldn’t make the project look like the drawing, he’d make the drawing look like the project.