Okay for Now

  He never said a thing. Not one thing.

  I went inside, where a woman on the phone smiled and raised her hand to tell me she'd just be a second. It was a swell place, a really swell place. Thick green carpet. Paneled walls. Pictures of the board of directors. Lamps with green shades. Red leather furniture. And by the windows looking out to the water, plants with long stems and these flowers that—well, it's hard to describe. They didn't even look real.

  The woman hung up the phone. "They're orchids," she said. "Mr. Ballard grows them. Most of these will be gone in a week or two."

  "Gone?"

  "When they start to blossom like this, he sends them to his old employees who still live in town. You're Douglas Swieteck, aren't you?"

  I nodded.

  "I'm Mrs. Stenson. I'm sure he'll see you. Just let me call in."

  But she didn't need to, because a door in the paneled walls opened and there was Mr. Ballard himself, silk tie and all. "My partner!" he said. "Mrs. Stenson, have you met my partner?"

  She smiled, laughed.

  "Come in, come in," he said. And I did. I guess I don't need to tell you about what his office was like, except that it was mostly like the room outside, but one wall had pictures of Mr. Ballard throwing horseshoes with a whole lot of people I didn't know and a couple I did: Mayor John Lindsay and—I'm not lying—President Lyndon B. Johnson, which he saw me looking at. "Never throw horseshoes with a Texan," he said. "They don't like to lose. So, partner, what are you going to do with the hundred dollars?"

  He went and sat down at his desk, put his feet up on it, next to a long, long tube.

  I looked at the tube.

  "If you ask me—and you don't have to, since it's your money—I'd put it in a savings account for college. It would be a good start."

  "A hundred dollars?"

  "The hundred dollars I sent home with your father. When you didn't come by on Monday, I gave it to him for—" He stopped. He took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. "You didn't get it."

  "No, no," I said. "No, I got it. Thanks. A savings account for college is a good idea."

  He stared at me for a long time.

  "What?" I said.

  "You didn't get the baseball either."

  "I got it. It's great. It's in my room right now. Thanks."

  "You sure?"

  I'm sure.

  It was just like my father said. You shouldn't count on anything.

  Mr. Ballard sat back, nodded, smiled a little. "So what can I do for you?"

  I looked out his windows, past the orchids on the windowsill, and down toward the river. It was wide, and the trees on the far side were starting to shake their leaves down. It was getting colder.

  "You practice horseshoes here?"

  Mr. Ballard had horseshoe pits down by the river, and we played in the cool with the sound of water in our ears, and the clanging of the shoes against the posts when he threw them, and the thud of the shoes against the ground when I threw them.

  Here are the stats:

  Mr. Ballard threw four ringers in a row, and five in a row another time.

  He had fourteen ringers all together.

  And six leaners—which still count, by the way.

  I had one leaner—which, you remember, counts.

  And I had one ringer where the shoe wrapped itself around the top of the post, spun around a couple of times, and then dropped onto the sand.

  I think Mr. Ballard was happier about my ringer than I was.

  "Doug," he said, "you got the arc just right on that one. And it doesn't matter how many times it spins around, as long as it comes down flat like that."

  And just so you don't think I really stink at horseshoes, you should know that even though that was the only ringer I threw, I did come close four more times, and I rang the post twice, and even though it doesn't count, it still isn't bad.

  "A little more practice," Mr. Ballard said, "and you'll be a better thrower than President LBJ ever hoped to be. You come by anytime, okay? The shoes will always be waiting for you." He set them down against a stake. "Right here."

  We walked back up from the river, and Mr. Ballard told me to stop by his office and he'd have Mrs. Stenson see if she could find us some lemonade to celebrate my first ringer, and when we got up there, Mrs. Stenson was standing by his desk, and there was someone else there holding a stack of frame pieces, and a picture of a bird from you know where was spread out on Mr. Ballard's desk, and Mrs. Stenson said, "You're just in time. We're down to three choices for the Yellow Shank," and Mr. Ballard went over to see.

  I did too.

  It was about as far from the Black-Backed Gull as you could get. The Yellow Shank wasn't the first thing you saw at all. You saw his world first. It was fall, and the grass was getting duller, and the trees were gold and that reddish brown that looks like the color of old bricks. The Yellow Shank was walking in a sunny spot, looking like he owned the place. The water in front of him was dark, and the woods beyond were darker still. Really dark. But Audubon knew something about composition: he kept the top of the bird's back as straight as the horizon, right smack in the middle of the scene, with a beak held up just as flat and just as straight, and an eye that said I know where I belong. You couldn't help but be a little jealous of this bird.

  I leaned in close. The lines in the water matched the line of the bird's beak. That would be easy to get. What would be hard to get were the legs. The back leg was poised as if it was about to leave its toehold and push ahead, and the way of it, the whole way of it, said that the head and back wouldn't be moving at all—just those legs. How did he give you the way the bird was going to move, even though he didn't show him moving?

  "Any closer and we'll have to frame you too," said Mrs. Stenson.

  "I think," said the guy holding the stack of frames, "that if you're going to put it over the bookcase there, you'll want this mahogany frame to go with that wood."

  "But we're not sure it's going there," said Mrs. Stenson. "It could go by the window, as if the bird were looking outside. Then the mahogany wouldn't do at all."

  "What do you think?" Mr. Ballard said. I looked up. He was asking me.

  "I think it belongs back in the book," I said.

  I know. That made me sound like a jerk. A real jerk. I didn't even mean to say it. Mr. Ballard had supposedly already given me this signed baseball and a hundred dollars and stuff. I was wearing his Timex watch! I should just shut up.

  But he asked.

  The guy holding the stack of frames looked at me like I was trying to take bread from his mouth.

  Mrs. Stenson looked at me like I was going a little too far.

  And Mr. Ballard said, "Why?"

  "Because," I said, "things belong in the class to which they have been assigned."

  The guy with the stack of frames put another one on the corner of the print. "Perhaps the mixture of the darker and lighter tone in this one would allow you to hang the print in either spot," he said.

  Mrs. Stenson looked down at the new frame, then back at me.

  Mr. Ballard drummed his fingers along the edge of his desk. He looked at me, then at the Yellow Shank, and he let his fingers light on the sunny spot beneath it. "Let's roll the thing up and put it back in its tube," he said. "I think I heard a ringer."

  There aren't too many things around that are whole, you know. You look hard at most anything, and it's probably beat up somewhere or other. Beat up, or dinged up, or missing a piece, or tattooed. Or maybe something starts out whole and then it turns into junk, like Joe Pepitone's cap getting rained on in a gutter somewhere. Probably you can't even tell it's a cap anymore. Probably you wouldn't even want to pick it up if you saw it. But it didn't start that way. It started as Joe Pepitone's cap, and when he was out in the field, the sun was beating down on it from above the stands of Yankee Stadium and he could smell the grass and the dirt of the infield beneath its brim.

  When you find something that's whole, you do what you can to keep it tha
t way.

  And when you find something that isn't, then maybe it's not a bad idea to try to make it whole again. Maybe.

  I mean, what would you do if you found a baseball with only 215 stitches? Wouldn't you want to put in one more to make it right?

  I know, that all sounds cosmic. But that's what you would have thought too if you had been in the Marysville Free Public Library the next day when I brought the tube back in, and when Mr. Powell took one look at it and knew what it was. You would have thought it too when we went back upstairs and Mr. Powell slid the Yellow Shank out of the tube and opened the glass case and turned the pages until he found the place between plate CCLXXXVII and plate CCLXXXIX and laid the print back in.

  And if you looked at Mr. Powell's eyes, you would have thought what I thought: I am going to get the birds back. The Arctic Tern, the stupid Large-Billed Puffins, the Brown Pelican, and all the rest of them.

  I am going to get the birds back.

  And I'm going to start drawing again.

  Ernie Eco came by for supper that night before he and my father were going off somewhere to look at a new pickup that some idiot was selling for some price a whole lot less than he should be selling it for and all he wanted was a hundred-dollar down payment. It would be a steal, Ernie Eco said, eating another ham slice, and would I pass the mashed potatoes?

  My mother didn't say anything. She wasn't smiling.

  "I went down to the mill yesterday," I said.

  My father and Ernie Eco looked at me. My mother did too, with worried eyes. She held her fork in midair.

  "Yeah?" said my father.

  "I guess you two got the parking spots I won," I said.

  "So?" said Ernie Eco. "It doesn't cost Mr. Big Bucks Ballard a thing."

  "It just makes him look good to all the little guys who work for him," said my father.

  "He said that he gave you the—"

  "He didn't give me a thing," said my father. "Did you see me bring anything home? Did you? That's because he didn't give me a thing."

  "He said that he gave you the signed baseball and a hundred dollars."

  My father put his two hands down flat on the table. He looked at me a long time. "What are you trying to say?"

  "I'm telling you what Mr. Ballard said."

  My father's hands twitched. "If Mr. Big Bucks Ballard said he gave me the signed baseball and a hundred dollars, then he's a liar. You got that?"

  You know what I should have said. Even my brother knew what I should have said, because after what felt like a whole long time, my brother whispered, "Doug's got it."

  My father looked at my brother. "Shut up." He turned back to me. "I said, Mr. Big Bucks Ballard is a freaking liar. You got that?"

  Then I figured it out, how Audubon got the Yellow Shank to move. He's staring into this dark place, and he's just about to cross the river that divides him from it, and his back foot is halfway up because he's about to push off, and he knows what he's getting into, but he does it anyway, calm and smooth and straight. He's going to step into the middle of the picture, where he should be, with the light in back of him and the dark ahead. His whole world is waiting for him to do that.

  I was waiting for him to do it.

  I looked at my brother.

  Even though whatever is in the dark is waiting for the Yellow Shank, he's going to do it anyway.

  "Someone's a liar," I said.

  Here are the stats for that night:

  He missed me the first time because I leaned away.

  He missed me the second time because I pushed the chair back and got up.

  He just clipped me when I had to push through Ernie Eco's arm, the jerk.

  And he missed me again when I spun around and got to the back door first.

  I count that a win.

  I went back to the Marysville Free Public Library and stayed until it closed at nine o'clock. Mr. Powell had left the book open to the Yellow Shank. That bird, he knew where he was going, even if he was going on stupid yellow legs.

  He knew.

  But that doesn't mean anything is going to be easier.

  When I got home late that night, my father was gone, my mother was in her bedroom, and my brother was flipping baseball cards all by himself, which tells you something about how much he has going on between his ears.

  I started up the stairs.

  "Do you know what a jerk you are?" he said.

  "Shut up," I said.

  "All you had to do was say 'I got it.' That's all you had to do."

  I leaned over the banister. "Don't you ever want to say 'I don't got it,' just once? Don't you ever want—"

  "Every day, Douggo," he said.

  "Then why don't you?"

  "Because after you left, Douggo, who do you think he hollered at? Who do you think? That's why she's upstairs, so you don't see her face, because she's been crying since supper. Do you get it now?"

  I sat down on the stairs.

  "Do you get it, Douggo? Do you get it?"

  "Shut up. It's not like you—"

  "Like I what? Like I what, Douggo? Do you ever wonder what it's like to be so angry that you ... And then something happens, and after that, everyone figures that's what you're like, and that's what you're always going to be, and so you just decide to be it? But the whole time you're thinking, Am I going to be like him? Or am I already like him? And then you get angrier, because maybe you are, and you want to..."

  He stopped. He wiped at his eyes. I'm not lying. My brother wiped at his eyes.

  "Go upstairs," he said. "There's something on the dresser. Put it somewhere he can't find it."

  I started up the stairs.

  "And Douggo," he said. "Even if you're a jerk, you still got guts."

  Yup. My brother said that. I'm not lying.

  And you know what was on the dresser, right?

  I carried the baseball downstairs.

  "How did you—"

  "Drunks keep everything they want to hide in their cars."

  Flipping baseball cards. Wiping at his eyes. Flipping baseball cards.

  I went down to the basement and put the signed baseball in the pocket of Joe Pepitone's jacket. When I went back into our room, my brother was deep under the covers, his face turned away.

  "Thanks," I said.

  He didn't answer. But I got it.

  On Monday, it was like I was walking into the center of the picture.

  I got a new brown-paper book cover for Geography: The Story of the World and decorated it with an Arctic Tern on one side, and a Yellow Shank on the other—right in the middle of the paper. When Mr. Barber walked by my desk holding his coffee, he opened my book and flipped through the pages, which were perfect. "Thanks for taking care of it so well," he said. And when I nodded, he smiled, then hit me lightly on the shoulder. Like Joe Pepitone would do.

  I turned in my Chapter Review Map on the culture of China to Mr. McElroy and added a list of Chinese characters and their meanings that I wrote myself to make up for being late. Not bad for someone who at the beginning of the year could hardly ... well...

  In English, when we got to Chapter 38 of Jane Eyre— which I had read twice already because of Miss Cowper's County Literacy Unit—Miss Cowper turned to me and said, "Let's have Douglas finish the novel for us," and I looked at her, and I started to sweat, and I looked down at the page. You know how many words in Jane Eyre have more syllables than any word has a right to?

  But you know what? I got it. I really got it. Most of it.

  Lil Spicer said I was the best reader of all. Which was a lie. But so what? So what?

  I raised my hand in Mrs. Verne's class, and even though it took a few tries, she finally called on me, and I'm not lying when I'm telling you that no one else in the class had even imagined a z axis. Mrs. Verne was pretty impressed and said that I must have a fabulous visual imagination.

  Did you get that? Fabulous.

  In PE the Wrestling Unit was still going on, but the So-Called Gym Teacher did
n't say anything when I ignored the lined-up platoons and went outside to run. It was November now, and most of the trees had dropped their leaves off and were all bare and dark. But as long as the So-Called Gym Teacher was going to let me run, I'd run. And it didn't hurt any that James Russell and Otis Bottom started to run with me. I didn't ask them to. They just saw me going outside and decided to come along, I guess. We mostly ran without saying anything.

  And in Mr. Ferris's class? Imagine yourself handing in lab reports that get Clarence rocking his little wooden hooves off, and you have it.

  So after school on Monday, I asked Lil if she wanted to walk over to the Ballard Paper Mill, and she said, "Why?" and I said I'd show her how to throw horseshoes, and she said, "How hard can it be?" and I said, "Harder than you think," and she said she guessed she'd try and so we went down behind the mill to the horseshoe pits. The shoes were there, just like Mr. Ballard promised.

  I showed Lil how to hold the shoe at the top, how to stand with her heel at the post, and how to swing her arm a couple of times, and she threw the first one about ten feet, which isn't, in case you don't know, even in the neighborhood of how far it has to go. Then she threw the second one ten feet again and got so disgusted that she threw the third one as hard as she could and it hit on its side and rolled almost all the way to the post. Then she figured that she had the technique down and she threw the last one as hard as the third, except that she didn't let go until the end of her swing, and the horseshoe went straight up into the air and she screamed and ducked and I bent over her and held her so it wouldn't hit her when it came down except it came down next to us instead of on top of us and when we stood up, she looked at me like—like I'd done something noble and heroic.

  You know how that feels?

  Fabulous.

  Then we collected all the horseshoes and walked over to the other post and she said, "Why don't you throw one?" and so I did.

  It was perfect. I swung my arm twice, let the horseshoe go just right, and it flew up, slowly, gracefully, and then it turned once and let its two ends come down and it landed flat and skidded on the sand just enough to ting the post.