Sticks

  It would be nice if Arlen and Francine were cheering for me, but that’s not how it’s going. Arlen’s reading his memory book for the third time. He’s seeing wood everywhere—toothpicks, Popsicle sticks. He’s only forgotten one thing in two weeks—his homework—and his father says, “Well, well,” now when he comes home for dinner. Last Saturday we actually heard the sound of a hammer and nails.

  Francine is making the list for her parents on why she needs a rabbit. She draws a line through her first point, IF I DON’T GET A RABBIT I’LL ABSOLUTELY DIE.

  “How ’bout, if I don’t get a rabbit, I’ll be unfulfilled?”

  Arlen nods. “Your creativity will dry up, too.”

  “Yes!” Francine writes furiously. “And it could stunt my growth. Hidden anger does that, you know.”

  I aim at the quarter, miss for the zillionth time, and stomp my foot.

  “Rabbits are clean and quiet,” she says, writing madly. “They don’t bark, they don’t bother anyone, they require less care than other kinds of animals. Their droppings can be used to fertilize gardens. I read that in a book. That one’s for my mother.”

  “Vernon,” I say to myself, “if you can focus you can do anything . . . .”

  I get a bead on the quarter and shoot the cue ball one last time. It hits the rail; the quarter jumps perfect.

  “I did it!’ I shout.

  Arlen leans forward smiling. “Do it again,” he says.

  I concentrate and do it again.

  Yes!

  Buck Pender, Good Citizen of the Week, comes over, sneering. “What are you doing, Vernon?”

  Arlen folds his arms.

  Francine folds her paper.

  I take a deep breath and focus on the quarter, hoping I can ace it now. I aim my stick, ram the cue ball to the rail. The quarter jumps!

  I look right at him. “I’m making money dance, Pender.”

  Buck backs off a half-inch. “It looks stupid!”

  “Looks cool to me,” says Arlen.

  “Totally,” says Francine.

  I look up and love what I see.

  Buck Pender is gone.

  * * *

  I’m telling Mom what a great guy Joseph Alvarez is every chance I get, putting extra emphasis on how responsible he is and how I’d trust him with my whole life. Mom and Serena are at the dining room table, drinking tea and laughing. Mom’s showing the new photographs she took at nursery school.

  “The kids are so cute when they bring their treasures in for show-and-tell. Jimmy Johnson used to hold out a pinecone in the beginning of the year and sit down fast. Now he marches up front and says, ‘This is my truck; don’t touch it.’”

  Serena smiles at me. I say if anybody’s interested, Joseph Alvarez is teaching me better than anyone’s ever been taught. Mom shifts funny in her chair.

  “He’s definitely changed, Mom. You don’t have to worry.”

  She bites her lip and looks at Serena, who starts stuffing blue papers in citizens’ patrol envelopes. “Let’s just take it slow, Mickey.”

  If we take it any slower, it’s not going to be moving.

  I ride my twenty-one-speed super-rock-jumper mountain bike that I got for my birthday to Arlen’s.

  Not much is moving over there either.

  Francine says there must be some strange chemical in Cruckston’s water supply that’s slowing parents down. She gave her parents the list on why she wants a rabbit twenty-six hours ago and hasn’t heard anything.

  “It’s only two pages,” she shouts, “not counting the title page I did in glitter!”

  She flops down by the oak tree in Arlen’s backyard and Mangler starts squealing. Mangler’s real nervous. Mrs. Bellweather started frying bacon next door and the smell of it carries, especially if you’re a pig. Mangler goes into his hole to wallow and covers his head. Arlen and I took a blood oath never to eat bacon. We didn’t actually want to bleed, though, so we used ketchup.

  Arlen says if Francine’s parents say no to the rabbit she can use Mangler in her act.

  “No one wants to see a pig come out of a hat!” she screams.

  “A pig,” Arlen screams back, “is better than a rabbit!”

  “I have to be able to lift the animal, Arlen! Is there no one in this world who acknowledges my true calling?”

  Arlen lets loose one of his famous burps, and I shoot one back at him, but Francine doesn’t pay attention.

  “Some people,” she says, “never discover their true purpose in life. Others, like me, have somehow always known.”

  She snaps her fingers and a fan pops out of her sleeve. She walks off fanning herself, leaving me and Arlen to burp alone.

  * * *

  It’s Saturday. I’ve got quarters hopping like frogs on a pond. Joseph Alvarez says I’m the fastest study he’s ever seen.

  Ganas!

  He says I’ve got it in my blood.

  He tells me the story of his great-great-grandfather, the vaquero, who killed a bear that had come into his camp once, panicking the horses. He looks at Buck, who’s smirking. “There’s always something sniffing around trying to scare us when we’re moving forward, son.”

  Ganas.

  I’ve got to keep practicing.

  I start getting up half an hour early in the mornings and talk Poppy into letting me shoot a few racks before I leave for school. I’m pushing so hard, my blisters have blisters.

  Joseph Alvarez is giving me everything he’s got. I’m getting it, too: follow-through shots, spinning the balls with English, playing for position, safety shots, which put the cue ball in a difficult place for your opponent. I’m holding my stick like a butterfly, springing it into action.

  Every time Joseph Alvarez comes over, Mom makes herself scarce. It bothers him bad, but he keeps coming to help, just like he promised.

  Poppy said Mom’s got him frozen in time, but it’s not her whole fault.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s all that’s right for me to say.” Poppy flipped open her Modern Maturity magazine, which meant our talk was over.

  I look at Joseph Alvarez now, standing there at table six, dead on his feet. He said he hit some nasty traffic going south and stopped to help a woman whose car had spun off the road.

  “You’ve got to help people when the road’s your home,” he says, and tells me how he drove all night long from North Carolina to get here.

  “It would have been okay if you were late.”

  He waves it off. “On the break,” he says soft, “you’ve got to find more power.”

  He lets loose his machine-gun break, but it doesn’t have the same crack it did last week. Six in the corner. He nails the one. “Try to shoot quick,” he says. “You don’t lose your focus that way.”

  I try shooting fast and get all mixed up.

  “Just do what I say,” he says, irritated.

  I bite my lip and blow three shots.

  Joseph slams his hand on the table. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  I say maybe he needs to go home and get some sleep and—

  “I’m doing the best I can for you, son! If you’re not going to listen, there’s not much I can—”

  “I’m listening! I’m just not getting it!”

  Joseph Alvarez is squinting his eyes like he’s got a headache.

  “Okay,” he says, patting my shoulder. “Okay.”

  Mom walks into the hall, sees us, looks down, and starts up the stairs.

  “Ruthie!” he calls after her, but she’s gone.

  Joseph Alvarez’s shoulders sink into his chest. “That’s enough for today,” he says, packing up.

  “No,” I say. “I’ve got to practice. I’ve got to get better! Can’t you help me some more?”

  “I haven’t got any more. I need space.” He holds up his hands and backs out the door.

  CHAPTER

  I tell Camille to keep her stupid face out of my business.

  I tell Poppy and Mom there’s
nothing wrong with me and can’t a guy have some time alone without everybody bugging him?

  I don’t tell anyone that I cried last night or that I shout at Petie Pencastle to get his smelly body away from me at recess or that I get a D on the surprise spelling quiz because I’m not paying attention.

  Mrs. Riggles asks me what’s wrong since I’m usually a good speller.

  I don’t tell her.

  On the way home from school I kill two beetles because they’re ugly and crawling on the same sidewalk I’m walking on.

  It’s all Mom’s fault for acting so mean to him!

  I’m in my room with a stomachache. I shine up the quarter Joseph Alvarez gave me and put it on my desk next to my toad skin and my Replogle globe that I got from my uncle Ed for Christmas. I am very good at geography and can name all fifty states alphabetically and every major river in the Western Hemisphere. I came in second at the Grover Cleveland geography bee next to Arlen, who always comes in first because he’s gifted. I would have held on if I’d remembered that the Arabian Sea is bigger than the South China Sea. Arlen remembered. He only has a bad memory for things you can lose.

  I run my finger down the globe through Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and into Texas.

  I don’t know where he is.

  Worse than that, I don’t know if he’s coming back.

  * * *

  “What we need,” shouts Francine in the middle of Pinkerton Park, “is a planet where kids can live when the adults in their lives aren’t being fair!”

  Arlen and I nod. Francine has just decided to stop speaking to her father until she graduates from high school. She plops down on the tree stump right next to the little patch of ground where I buried my turtle Boris in a little Frosted Flakes box after he died. Boris was an excellent turtle. The daisy seeds I planted over him never grew.

  “It’s going to be a little tough,” she explains, “us living in the same house and all, but when he said I couldn’t have a rabbit, no matter what my list said, well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that something inside me died.”

  “You won’t graduate for seven years,” Arlen says. “You’ll talk to him before then.”

  Francine shakes her head. “I have nothing more to say. I was even going to call the rabbit Lester after him—that’s the ultimate compliment, you know. He said that April’s cat couldn’t handle living with an overgrown rodent and he didn’t want another animal smelling up the house. He’s destroyed my entire career and doesn’t care.” Francine’s eyes are wet. “I’ll go right from high school to the convent. I’ll never play Vegas!”

  Arlen says adults don’t realize the power they have over us.

  I don’t say anything.

  It’s been three days and I haven’t heard anything from Joseph Alvarez.

  I want to tell them about it, but I’m afraid if I say it with words, it will make it all the more true.

  * * *

  I’m heading out the front door for school, feeling not much like going. I walk past Cassetti’s Bakery and the caramel sticky buns in the window. The smells don’t even make me hungry. Mr. Kopchnik walks down the fire escape from his apartment and unlocks the door to his fix-it shop.

  “So, champion!” he calls to me.

  I lift my hand in a quick hello and keep on walking.

  “Hand me the adjustable monkey wrench, will you?”

  “Huh?”

  A dirty hand waves from underneath Mom’s old Chevy, which is parked across from Crystal’s Launderette.

  “Get the wrench, Mickey.”

  Joseph Alvarez is lying underneath Mom’s car!

  I see a bunch of tools on the street. I get the wrench.

  “I’m fixing your mother’s car.”

  I’m standing out on the sidewalk as he’s grunting and rolling around under it.

  “That’s really nice!” I say.

  “I’m hoping it’ll make a difference.”

  I’m hoping too. If he sticks some money under the hood, it might help.

  “There.” Joseph Alvarez rolls out from under the car, covered with grease. “Let’s start her up.”

  He’s standing there all big and dirty and I want to shout that it’s really good to see him.

  “I’m sorry about the other day, son. Tiredness just got the best of me.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Ohio. Had a load of cable to deliver. I should have called you.”

  He starts the car, lifts up the hood, and listens to the engine. “No breaks in the sound,” he says to me. “She’s running good now.” He wipes his hands on a towel.

  Just then Mom heads out the door, lugging her bag of puppets for the nursery-school kids, and nearly keels over when she sees us.

  Joseph Alvarez wipes his face on his sleeve. “I didn’t know how to fix things between us, Ruthie, so I thought fixing your old car here might get the ball rolling.”

  Mom takes a big breath and looks down.

  “That’s kind of you,” she says.

  “It really is,” I say.

  He goes and revs the engine. “New belt, oil change, sparks. I’ve got my good points.”

  “New belt?” Mom walks over to him. “You mean I don’t get to wake the entire neighborhood in the morning starting it up?”

  Joseph Alvarez opens his hands and grins. “They’re going to have to get alarm clocks like everybody else. I had to jimmy your lock and hot-wire the engine, Ruthie. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Mom swallows big. “It’s that easy to break into my car?”

  “Only if you know what you’re doing.”

  Mom reaches to shake Joseph Alvarez’s hand and gets a fistful of car grease. He starts laughing and hands her the towel. I’m just smiling away and Mom wipes some grease on my nose.

  Joseph Alvarez leans against the car. “I couldn’t help thinking how Charlie and me used to fix those old cars.”

  Mom smiles sad. “Sometimes I’d wonder if I was married to a whole man or just those feet of his hanging out from underneath cars.”

  “You remember the McCoy brothers?” Joseph asks.

  Mom groans.

  “You remember how they drove that old Chrysler Charlie got running for them all the way from Detroit to make the funeral?”

  Mom nods. “A fifty-seven Imperial. Bright yellow. It broke down going into the cemetery. Johnny McCoy pushed it while his brother steered so they could stay in the funeral procession. He said the only man who could keep it running was Charlie.”

  Joseph Alvarez is looking up to the sky. “Johnny was going to leave it there by the grave as a tribute. He said Charlie would have liked it better than flowers.”

  “He would have, too,” Mom says.

  I’ve never heard that story. I’ve heard about the funeral, though. Poppy said all Dad’s pool player friends brought their sticks to the church and when the casket was carried out, they rapped the handles of their sticks over and over on the floor in the pool player’s applause. It’s the greatest honor a player can get.

  Mom gets up, swings her big black purse over her shoulder. Camille calls it the Black Hole. Things go in there and never come out. “Well, guys, I’ve got to go to work.” She motions me to come. “I’ll drive you to school, Mickey.” She stands there a minute, gets her car keys. “Thank you, Joseph.”

  “Anytime.”

  Mom and I get in the Chevy. Joseph Alvarez bunches up the greasy towel.

  Mom concentrates hard on the road and drives off.

  “Boy,” I say, “it was really nice of him to do that, huh?”

  Mom’s holding the wheel tight. She stops at the red light by Jacoby’s Pest Control. Jacoby’s new sign has a rat on it the size of Arlen.

  “Yes it was.” Mom rubs her forehead. “Fixing a car is a nice thing, Mickey, but it doesn’t fix everything.”

  CHAPTER

  Mom’s hanging on the sidelines watching Joseph Alvarez and me play. I even get her to play a rack of rotation pool with us, which she ha
sn’t done in forever. Mom can’t bank shots for anything. I beat her bad. She says I’m an awesome player and getting real fine coaching.

  “Thank you for what you’re doing,” she says to Joseph Alvarez.

  “Thank you for letting me, Ruthie. I could give you a couple of tips on a better way to hold the stick . . . .”

  “That’s all right, Joseph . . . .”

  “Wouldn’t take much, Ruthie. You’re holding it a little high, which is throwing your aim a bit and—”

  “No thank you.”

  Joseph Alvarez is going to Buffalo tomorrow with a load of motor oil and then halfway across Canada, which he said might take two weeks. This isn’t great news, because, as far as I know, Carter Krantz isn’t going anywhere.

  “You just practice with all you’ve got.”

  “I will.”

  “I got one more thing for you to work on, but you don’t do it at the table. You practice clearing out your mind and focusing. Shut out the world, shut out the noise, shut out all the things in you that say you can’t do it.”

  “Blinders,” I say, “like my dad.”

  “You’ve got it.” He gives my hand a firm shake. “Well, it looks like you’ve found your ganas.”

  I smile big and say I sure have.

  “Then you let it drive you,” he says. “And start playing other people, Mickey. Good to get a lot of game experience before the big day.”

  I nod.

  “But don’t play Buck,” he advises. “It’s not that you’re not good enough, just don’t give him the edge, you know?”

  “Yeah.” I want to give him a hug goodbye, but that wouldn’t be cool.

  “We’ll practice when I get back.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Joseph Alvarez tips his hat and heads for the door. I run after him.

  “Drive careful,” I say.

  “I’ll do that, son.” He looks down smiling, gives me a good hug, and heads out the door into the night.

  * * *

  It’s seven days since Joseph left and I’m getting good. Everyone can see it.

  I think Buck’s nervous.