Okay for Now

"Oh, Douggie, Douggie," she said. "I'm so glad you're home. Look at this."

  She held up an envelope.

  There was a U.S. Army insignia in the left-hand corner.

  "It's got to be from Lucas," I said.

  "But the address isn't his handwriting," she said.

  She was right. She went back to cutting the peaches and pears into smaller and smaller pieces. The liquid Jell-O was cooling on the stove.

  "You better open it," I said.

  "You open it," she said.

  I opened the letter and took it out. It was in script, so it was really hard to read. I held it out to her.

  She looked at me, turned to wash her hands, looked out the window, turned back and looked at the letter, and finally took it.

  Her terrified eye.

  Then she read aloud the most important parts.

  That a friend of Lucas was writing the letter for him. That Lucas had been wounded pretty bad, but was mostly okay now. That he would be home in a couple of months, maybe three, maybe a little more, depending on how things went. You know the army. That he hoped we wouldn't mind if he looked a little bit different. Everyone comes home from Vietnam a little bit different.

  That Lucas couldn't wait to see us.

  She held the letter against her chest. She looked at me. She closed her eyes.

  "What is it?"

  "He says he can't wait to see us," she said in this squeak of a voice.

  She put her hands to her face.

  "Mom?"

  "And he says that he loves us."

  She opened her eyes and looked at the letter again, folded it, put it back in its envelope.

  She put it up on the window ledge, over the kitchen sink.

  You know, you know, how can you smile like that, and be sobbing and sobbing all over the peaches and pears?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Black-Backed Gull Plate CCXLI

  "THAT LEFT FOOT has to feel like it's in the water. In it, Mr. Swieteck. Not in front of it. You want to give the impression of depth."

  "I know the stupid foot is in the stupid water," I said.

  "So how does Audubon help you to know it?"

  "He changes the color of the foot."

  "How else?"

  "The lines aren't as sharp."

  "Exactly. The whole form of the foot starts to blur. The texture fades away. You can't even see the webbing between these two toes."

  "So how do I..."

  "Take your pencil and we'll lighten the strokes here, and bend them just a bit, since light is bent when it enters the water. Now, follow my hand."

  You think this is easy? I'm not lying, it isn't. I'd been working on the Large-Billed Puffins all September, and most of the time I was working on the stupid fading foot, because an artist doesn't draw two-dimensionally, in case you didn't know. An artist draws three-dimensionally on a two-dimensional surface, which Mr. Powell pointed out to me and which I pointed out to Lil Spicer.

  "How do you do that?" she asked.

  "You have to be an artist to know," I said.

  And if you think she said, Then how do you know? or something snotty like that, she didn't. Figure out why.

  Things at Washington Irving Junior High School were going mostly okay. Mostly. Nothing had happened to Geography: The Story of the World, which was good because Mr. Barber checked on my book every time he passed down the aisle drinking his huge cup of coffee. I think he didn't care that I wasn't turning in my answers to the Review Questions at the end of the chapters because that meant I wasn't messing up his new geography book. Mr. McElroy had been showing us filmstrips about the barbarian hordes of Russia with records that gave little pings to let him know when he was supposed to advance the strip. You can't believe how many filmstrips there are about the barbarian hordes of Russia. Miss Cowper still hadn't made us start stupid Jane Eyre, so we had all 160 pages to look forward to—not that it mattered, because I wasn't going to read it. Mrs. Verne hadn't called on me yet when I raised my hand, but she had called on me when I didn't raise my hand so that she could trip me up and show everyone what a chump I was. But I figured that's what she was up to, and so when she asked if I knew what a quadratic equation was when she thought that no one in the room knew except for her, I knew. I hadn't pulled any funny business in Coach Reed's PE class—no sirree, buster—except that I sneaked over to the Shirts Team from the Skins Team when we finally played basketball after two weeks of dribbling and shooting drills. And in Mr. Ferris's class, Lil and I had done our first lab report together on creating a supersaturated solution, which meant that I did all the smelly chemically stuff and Lil took down the notes and wrote it up.

  Oh, and I don't mean to brag or anything, but that lab report that Lil and I turned in for the supersaturated solution? Let's just say that Mr. Ferris started Clarence rocking when he saw it.

  But I still couldn't get that left foot of the Large- Billed Puffin right. It always looked like it was in front of the water.

  I worked on it all weekend when my brother wasn't around (which was most of the time) and when my father wasn't around (which was all of the time). I even showed it to my mother, but you can't trust mothers to tell you the truth about stuff like this. They just tell you how good it is and what an artist you are and how they don't know where you got that talent since no one else in the family can draw.

  But I still couldn't get the foot right.

  On Sunday night, after my mother and I ate four thawed hamburgers and one large bowl of Italian macaroni salad, I decided to try for some inspiration, which is something that every artist needs. So I went downstairs to the basement and got Joe Pepitone's jacket and put it on. Then I went back upstairs to my room and rolled out the paper and tried to fade that foot into the water, because an artist has to know how to give an impression of depth, you might remember.

  And I started to get it. I really did.

  And then my brother came home—and upstairs—and into our room. And first he said, "How come you're wearing a jacket when..." and then he saw the drawing of the Large-Billed Puffins and then he laughed because he wouldn't know a decent drawing if it walked up to him and punched him in the face, so he grabbed it like the jerk he is and looked at it and laughed again and said, "Can't you even draw a foot right? It looks like it's underwater, Douggo," and then he tore it up and said, "I guess you'll just have to try again," and then he scattered all the pieces on my bed because that's what twisted criminal minds do.

  Then, still laughing, he left, not even noticing that I had Joe Pepitone's jacket on, the chump—which, of course, I was glad about, since it was a pretty close call. I went back down to the basement and hung it up beneath the stairs again.

  And you know what?

  I was smiling. I was smiling like all get-out.

  If you were paying attention back there, you'd know why.

  So on the first Saturday of October, after a week when Mr. McElroy had had enough of the Russian hordes and had probably run out of pinging filmstrips anyway and so we were now headed across the Great Wall into China, and a week when Mrs. Verne finally did call on me when I had my hand up and when I answered right—not to brag—that it was negative x and not negative y, and a week when I had snuck over to the Shirts team again and Coach Reed couldn't figure out why his platoon system wasn't working and how someone was pulling some funny business on him, I went over to the Marysville Free Public Library after my deliveries, ready to tell Mr. Powell that I had figured out how to give the impression of depth. Mrs. Merriam with her loopy glasses looked up when I came in.

  "He's in a meeting," she said.

  "Is he done soon?" I said.

  "He's in a meeting. That's all I know. It's not like I've memorized his schedule. I'm just supposed to do all this cataloging by myself, I suppose."

  I went up to see the Large-Billed Puffins. Maybe I ought to give them names, since it felt like we'd gotten to know each other.

  But they were gone. Just like the Arctic Tern.

&nb
sp; This time, the page was turned to a dying bird. And I mean, really dying. Most of the picture was this one wing, held straight up. All its feathers were spread out, and you could see how Audubon got their pattern down—three rows of long, overlapping dark feathers, tipped white at the ends. You could feel how the wind would cruise over them. It was so beautiful, and it's what you looked at first.

  And then you looked down at the second wing, which was crushed.

  And then you looked at the belly of the bird, which was spouting thick red blood all over the dark feathers.

  And then you looked beneath the bird, where the blood was in a puddle.

  And then you looked at the bird's head. After that, that's all you looked at.

  I would have given Joe Pepitone's jacket to save this bird.

  His beak was wide open and his tongue was stretched out into a point. He was screeching while his blood ran. His head was pulled far back, like he was taking one last look at the sky that he would never fly in again. And his round eye told you he knew that everything was ruined forever.

  It was a horrible picture, and I couldn't stop looking at it.

  I was still looking at it when Mr. Powell puffed up the stairs after his meeting. He came over to the bird and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. (Just so you know, he didn't have his glasses on a loop because I had finally told him how dumb that looks.)

  "Mr. Powell," I said, "he's dying"—as if anyone needed to point that out.

  He nodded and put his glasses back on. "That's how Audubon got his specimens," he said. "For some reason, he wanted to show the Black-Backed Gull after he had shot it." He leaned against the case.

  "What happened to the puffins?" I said.

  "I want you to work on this gull now," he said. "You see how Audubon has combined some of what we've worked on before? When he stretches out this wing, the bird seems so still, like the Large-Billed Puffins. But the bottom half of its body is in movement, like the Arctic Tern."

  "Not like the tern," I said.

  "No. Not exactly."

  "So what happened to the Arctic Tern? And to the puffins?"

  "Do you see how he's left the space white and blank behind the gull? He doesn't want anything to distract the eye from the outstretched wing."

  "He doesn't even want to give the impression of depth."

  "No," said Mr. Powell.

  "Which we'd be able to see if we compared the puffins to the gull."

  Mr. Powell nodded.

  "So can we do that?"

  Mr. Powell took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes again. "We can't do that," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because the Large-Billed Puffins are gone."

  "The page is..."

  "Sold."

  "Sold?"

  "The puffins are gone, Mr. Swieteck. And the Arctic Tern, to an anonymous collector from overseas, I'm told. And the Red-Throated Diver, sold because the buyer thought it would make such a nice picture over the fireplace in her parlor. And the Brown Pelican. And if you were in the meeting with me downstairs, you would have seen Mr. Ballard's secretary hand over a check for twenty-four hundred dollars made out to the Town Council of Marysville. She'll stop by tonight to pick up the Yellow Shank."

  "You can't sell the pages of a whole book one by one."

  "That's exactly the problem. When it's an Audubon, you can. Most buyers can't afford a whole book, but they can buy one plate at a time—if they find someone low enough to cut them out of a folio."

  I looked back at the dying gull. At his ruined wing. In the ruined book.

  "Is it Mrs. Merriam who—"

  "She doesn't have anything to do with it, and even though she doesn't show it, she's distraught. The three trustees of the library happen to be on the Town Council. Sometimes, the town needs money. Sometimes even for good things. They'd like to sell the whole set of books, but the other three volumes belong to the Marysville Historical Society, and they're preserving them as they should be." Mr. Powell tapped the glass. "This is volume three. And since Marysville's public library is not so scrupulous as its historical society, this is the only volume that is missing any of its pages."

  "They're chumps for selling them," I said.

  "There are only a few perfect sets in the entire world," Mr. Powell said quietly.

  "And this isn't one of them."

  Mr. Powell nodded. "Not anymore. So, let's find some paper and begin on this wing."

  I looked back at the eye of the dying gull, who knew that everything was ruined forever, because that's how it always is.

  On Monday, Coach Reed caught me sneaking over to the Shirts Team and finally figured out the funny business. He told me in his sergeant's voice that I had to go over to the Skins Team and I had better not try to mess up his platoons again, no sirree, buster.

  I told him that I wanted to play on the Shirts Team and he should send someone else over to the Skins Team if they wanted to go.

  He said he'd send over to the Skins Team who he wanted to send over to the Skins Team, and buster, that was me.

  You can probably figure out that everything else in the gym had gone pretty quiet. Not a single dribble anywhere.

  I said that it didn't matter who went where as long as the teams were even, and I pointed out that with me on the Shirts Team we had even numbers so it didn't make much sense to send me to the Skins Team.

  Coach Reed said that he was the teacher.

  I said I thought you had to be able to count to be a teacher.

  He said, One, Two, Three, he sure could count the three days of After School Detention I had now and he wanted to know if I'd like to see him count even higher.

  I said sure.

  He said, Four, Five.

  I clapped.

  He said, Six, Seven, and before I could clap again he grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the gym and through the halls to Principal Peattie's office. Principal Peattie, who had been waiting for this moment and who decided to stretch things out and make me sweat, told me to sit in this chair by the secretary, which I did in my stupid gym uniform for almost half an hour before he opened his door and told me to come in and sit down and said that Principal Peattie had been expecting something like this all along and Principal Peattie was surprised that it hadn't happened sooner and Principal Peattie was going to throw the book at me so I learned my lesson and learned it good, and dang it, I should take this like a man and look Principal Peattie in the eye.

  He really wanted to see me sweat.

  "Look Principal Peattie in the eye!" he said.

  And I did. For a moment.

  "You're not here to look at a pelican," he said. "You're here to look at Principal Peattie!"

  I'm not lying. If you had been there, you wouldn't have looked him in the eye either. You would have looked past him, like me. You would have looked at the wall over his desk. And you would have seen what I saw: the Brown Pelican, the beautiful Brown Pelican, the beautiful and noble Brown Pelican.

  One of the pages razored out of Audubon's book.

  I got seven days of After School Detention and one more for not looking Principal Peattie in the eye. But I couldn't help it.

  Could you?

  It wasn't the best day I'd had at Washington Irving Junior High School. Tuesday was a little better, even though that morning in English we finally started reading Jane Eyre, by Miss Charlotte Brontë, which we were likely to be reading for a whole long time, since it was 160 pages long even in the abridgment, as you might remember.

  For the rest of that week, Miss Cowper read it aloud to us. I know. You're probably thinking that we were dying of boredom. But what was kind of surprising was that it wasn't so bad. By Friday, we were at this part when Jane is at the boarding school, and this jerk who runs it—who sort of reminds me of the principal of Washington Irving Junior High School—makes Jane stand on a stool because he wants everyone to think that she's a liar, like she's been going over to the other team in PE or something absolutely horrible like that. S
o she's standing there and everyone is supposed to stay away from her because the principal says that they should and you think she's going to crumple and just give up. But you know what?

  She doesn't.

  She sort of reminded me of Lil—which I did not tell her—and which you shouldn't tell her I said either.

  So the story wasn't so bad. But what was bad was that Miss Cowper decided that beginning next week, she would make us take turns reading it aloud. She would read for the first five minutes of class to give us a running start, she said, and then she would call on the next alphabetical victim to read for the next seven minutes.

  Terrific.

  So on Monday, she started with Otis Bottom, who read like he had written the thing himself. When he finished—and he read the parts after Jane was off the stool and trying not to wish that she could get even with Mr. Brocklehurst, the jerk—I almost wanted to stand up and clap, he was that good.

  Except that I really wanted to throw up, he was that good.

  Terrific again.

  When the period was almost over and Miss Cowper said, "We'll have five more new readers tomorrow," like she was promising a gift or something, I figured I'd better talk to her—because, you remember, I wasn't going to read Jane Eyre. So I waited until everyone left, even though I might be late for Mrs. Verne's class and I knew that Principal Peattie would love to see me waiting outside his office for another thirty minutes.

  "Miss Cowper," I said.

  She was putting pages away in a notebook, but she looked up at me.

  "I don't know if I want to read Jane Eyre out loud."

  "Everyone takes a turn, Douglas, even if you think you don't like the book."

  I looked around to be sure that no one was in the room to hear what I was about to say. "I like it well enough."

  "So what's the problem?"

  What was I supposed to say? I looked at her, like a chump.

  "Douglas, I know that Otis Bottom is a wonderful reader. It's a gift that he has. You may have different gifts. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to read aloud."