The Schwa Was Here

by Neal Shusterman

  “Get out of here!” said a voice much fuller, much stronger than I expected.

  My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dim light, so I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first. A low square shape moved at me through a doorway. Only when it pushed through the dogs could I see what it was. It was a wheelchair. Old Man Crawley was in a wheelchair.

  “Don’t move a muscle, or I’ll have them tear you to shreds, if I don’t do it myself.”

  He held a fireplace poker in the air as he rolled the chair forward with his other hand. His hair was gray and slicked back. His jaw was hard and square—it looked like he still had all his teeth, which is more than I can say for my own relatives that age. He wore a white shirt buttoned all the way to the neck, where loose skin flopped around like on a turkey—but mostly it was the poker that held my attention. The thing looked heavy, the thing looked sharp, and people in wheelchairs usually have lots of upper-body strength.

  “Which do you want?” I said.

  “What?”

  “You said ‘get out of here,’ and ‘don’t move a muscle.’ I can’t do both.”

  “You’re a wiseass.”

  Not at all happy with their master’s tone of voice, the dogs were now baring their teeth at me, in addition to barking and growling.

  “I can explain,” I said, which I really couldn’t, but don’t you always say that when you get caught doing something you shouldn’t be doing?

  “I have already called the police. They will be here momentarily to arrest you, at which time you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

  Which was good, because it meant he didn’t plan to kill me with the poker, or with the dogs. “Please, Mr. Crawley, I didn’t mean anything. It was just a bet, see? On a dare to get a dog bowl. That’s all. I would have given it back. I swear.”

  “The dog bowls are nailed down,” he informed me.

  “My mistake.”

  “How much did you bet?”

  “Fifty-four dollars,” I told him.

  “You just lost fifty-four dollars.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. So can I go now? It’s punishment enough, right?”

  “Fifty-four dollars is hardly a sufficient fine for breaking and entering, attempted theft, and the assault of an elderly man—”

  “But . . . wait . . . I didn’t assault you!”

  He smiled viciously. “Who do you think the police will believe, me or you?”

  By now most of the dogs had quieted down. A few had wandered off, a couple came over to sniff at me, but the rest all clustered protectively around the old man.

  “I really am sorry, Mr. Crawley.”

  “There are countries where delinquent children are caned for their misdeeds. Do you know what caning is?”

  “Kind of like whipping?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but more painful. You’d probably choose a few dog bites over a caning.”

  He put the poker down across the arms of his wheelchair. “You can tell your friend to come out from behind the curtains now.”

  My heart sank. “What friend?”

  “Lying does not help your case,” snapped Crawley.

  Before I could say any more, the Schwa emerged from behind the curtains, looking sheepish, like a dog who just dirtied the rug.

  “How did you know he was there?”

  “Let’s just say I’m observant,” said Crawley. “I don’t usually keep sneakers poking out from beneath my curtains.”

  Four out of five people didn’t notice the Schwa. It figures Crawley had to be a fifth person. He stared at us there, saying nothing, waiting for the police to arrive.

  “I . . . I didn’t know you were an invalid,” I said, which is a pretty stupid thing to say, but my brain tends to become spongelike when under stress.

  Crawley frowned. I thought he already was frowning. “I broke a hip,” he said, annoyed. “The wheelchair is only temporary.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry sorry sorry,” he mocked. “You sound like a broken record.”

  “Sorry,” I said, then grimaced.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Wendell Tiggor,” I said, without missing a beat.

  “Very good. Now tell me your real name.”

  This guy might have been old, but he was as sharp as a shark tooth. I sighed. “Anthony Bonano.”

  He turned to the Schwa. “And your name?”

  I had hoped he might have forgotten the Schwa was there, but luck was in short supply today.

  “Calvin. Calvin Schwa.”

  “Stupid name.”

  “I know, sir. It wasn’t my choice, sir.”

  I could hear sirens now, getting closer. I supposed Wendell and the Tiggorhoids had all deserted. No one in that crowd would risk their necks, or any other part of their anatomy, for us.

  “Well, there they are,” said Crawley, hearing the sirens. “Tell me, is this your first arrest, or are you repeat offenders?”

  As we weren’t actually arrested at the American Airlines terminal, I told him it was a first offense.

  “It won’t be the last, I’m sure,” he said.

  I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, sir, but I think it will be.”

  “Will be what?”

  “I think it will be the last time I’m arrested.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” He leaned over, scratching one of his dogs behind the ears. “Can’t change breeding, isn’t that right, Avarice?”

  The dog purred.

  Breeding? Now I was getting mad. “My breeding is fine,” I told him. The Schwa, who’s still mostly petrified, hits me to shut me up, but I don’t. “If you ask me, it’s your breeding that’s all screwed up.”

  Crawley raised his eyebrows and gripped his poker. “Is that so.”

  “It must take some pretty bad genes to turn someone into a miserable old man who’d send a couple of kids to jail just for trying to get a plastic dog bowl.”

  He scowled at me for a long time. The sound of sirens peaked, then stopped right outside. Then he said, “Genes aren’t everything. You failed to take environment into account.”

  “Well, so did you.”

  There came an urgent knocking at the door, and all the dogs went running toward it, barking. “Mr. Crawley,” said a muffled voice through the door, over the chorus of barks. “Mr. Crawley, are you all right?”

  The old man gave the Schwa and me a twisted grin. “Destiny calls.” He rolled off toward the door, calling back to us, “Either of you try to escape and I’ll have you shot.”

  I didn’t really believe that, but I also didn’t want to take any chances.

  “This is bad, Antsy,” the Schwa said. “Real bad.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Crawley rolled back in about a minute. Amazingly, no police officers were with him. “I told them it was a false alarm.”

  The sigh of relief rolled off the Schwa and me like a wave. “Thank you, Mr. Crawley.”

  He ignored us. “The police will only give you a slap on the wrist, and since you’re not crying hysterically in terror right now, I assume your parents will not beat you. Therefore I will administer your punishment personally. You will return here tomorrow by the front door, at three o’clock sharp, and begin working off your transgression. If you fail to come, I will find out what your parents do for a living, and I will have them fired.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “I’ve found I can do anything I please.”

  I thought it was just an idle threat, but then I remembered the great egg shortage. A man like Crawley had more money than God in a good economy, as my father would say, and probably had friends in both high and low places. If he said he’d have my father fired, I figured I should believe it.

  “What will you pay us?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s slavery!”

  “No,” said Crawley, with a grin so wide it stretched his wrinkles straight. “That’s com
munity service.”

  6. As If I Didn’t Already Have Enough Annoying Things to Do Every Day, Now I Gotta Do This

  I wasn’t too hungry at dinner that night. Sure, I was no stranger to failed schemes, but never had one backfired so badly. The fifty-four bucks were the least of my worries, now that Crawley was pulling our strings. It was enough to kill any appetite.

  For the entire meal I just sort of moved my food around my plate. My parents didn’t notice, mainly because I wasn’t Frankie or Christina. If Christina doesn’t eat, right away they’re feeling her forehead to see if she’s got a fever. As for Frankie, not eating isn’t one of his problems. He’s more likely to get yelled at for taking all the food. Once I tried to take a huge plateful like Frankie does, just to see what my parents would do. While I wasn’t looking, Frankie moved some food from my plate to his, and my parents got on his case instead of mine. He always complains that I get away with everything. Well, there are two sides to that wooden nickel.

  I was unnaturally quiet for most of the meal, which was probably a mistake, because it threw off the entire family equilibrium.

  Mom and Dad had begun a conversation about what sort of carpeting to put down in our unfinished finished basement. You have to understand that my parents live to bicker. You could stick them at the beach and they’d argue whether the ocean was bluish green, or greenish blue.

  They rarely argued over dinner, though, I think because when you eat, your blood rushes from your brain to your stomach, putting you at a strategic disadvantage, because how are you going to come up with the real zingers when your brain isn’t at full power?

  Like I said, it started as a discussion, and then it began heating up to the point where I would usually throw in some wisecrack. When I didn’t, the discussion suddenly evolved into an argument.

  “We already agreed it should be Berber!” Mom says.

  “I never agreed to anything! The carpet in the basement should match the rest of the house.” It’s escalating to the point where food is flying out of their mouths while they talk. Frankie just shakes his head, Christina’s reaching for her journal, and I start thinking about dog collars, maybe because dogs are on my mind after being at Crawley’s. When dogs bark too much, you can put on special collars, so each time the dog barks, it squirts out a funky smell. It doesn’t really teach dogs not to bark, but it distracts them long enough to make ’em forget they were barking.

  I decided to let the carpet argument build just a bit more, then dropped my fork on my plate loudly. “Jeez! What’s the big deal? Put down a hardwood floor and each of you can buy a rug.”

  “Watch that fork, you’ll break the plate!” Mom says.

  “What? Are you gonna pay for a wood floor?” Dad grumbles.

  “My friend’s got a wood closet to keep away bugs,” says Christina.

  “That’s cedar,” Mom explains.

  “We oughta build a cedar closet,” says Dad.

  And that was that. The conversation lapsed into an endless stream of other topics, and I went back to pushing my food around my plate. They never noticed I had stopped the argument, just like they didn’t notice I wasn’t eating. Sometimes the Schwa had nothing on me.

  “What do you think he’ll make us do?” the Schwa asked as we walked as slow as we dared from school to Crawley’s the next afternoon.

  “I really don’t want to think about it.” Truth was, I spent most of the night thinking about it. I could barely get my homework done, which is not all that unusual, but this time it wasn’t because of TV, or video games, or my friends. It was because all I could think of were the many forms of torture Crawley could devise. I once had a teacher who said my imagination was about as developed as my appendix, but I don’t agree, because I came up with a whole bunch of possibilities of what Crawley could do. He could make us clean his dog-fouled patio with our toothbrushes—they do stuff like that in the army, I hear. He could send us on dangerous errands to Mafia types where we might get whacked, because anyone that rich in Brooklyn has gotta know a few of those guys. Or what if he wanted us to move the bodies he’s got locked up in a cellar beneath the restaurant? At three in the morning, when you’re tossing in bed, it sounds almost possible, proving that my imagination is alive and well, or, I guess I should say, alive and sick.

  “I think we’re gonna wish we were arrested,” I told the Schwa.

  The restaurant only had a few customers at this hour of the afternoon. We identified ourselves to the maître d’, who I guess doubled as Crawley’s doorman for what few visitors he got.

  “Ah,” said the maître d’oorman, “Mr. Crawley is expecting you. Follow me.”

  He glided up the grand staircase real smooth, like it was a fast escalator and not stairs, then he took us through an unused part of the restaurant stacked with dusty old tables and broken chairs. We went down a hallway that led to the door of Mr. Crawley’s private residence.

  “Mr. Crawley, those boys are here,” the maître d’oorman said as he knocked. Barking and the pounding of paws followed. Then I could hear all the bolts sliding open on the other side, and Crawley pulled open the door while blocking the escape of the dogs with his wheelchair.

  “You’re five minutes early,” he said, the tone in his voice like we were half an hour late.

  We stepped in, he pushed the door closed behind us, a dog yelped because his nose got caught in the door for an instant, and there we were.

  Crawley reached into the pocket of his fancy robe—a dinner jacket, I think it’s called. The kind of thing Professor Plum would wear before killing Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick. From the pocket he pulled a few doggie treats and hurled them over his shoulder so the dogs would leave us alone.

  “I’ve decided to sentence the two of you to twelve weeks of community service,” he said. “Mr. Bonano, from this day forward, you shall be responsible for the sins. You, Mr. Schwa, shall be responsible for the virtues. Take all the time you need each day, but by no means are you to complete the task any earlier than five P.M. Now get to it.”

  I looked at the Schwa, the Schwa looked at me. I felt like I had just been called up to the board to explain an Einstein theory, but I don’t think Einstein could figure this one out, even if he was alive.

  “Why are you staring like imbeciles? Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Yeah, we heard you,” I said. “Sins and virtues. Now would you mind speaking in English that people who aren’t, like, ninety years old can understand?”

  He scowled at us. He was really good at that. Then he spoke, very slowly, as if to morons. “The seven virtues, and the seven deadly sins. Comprendo?”

  “Oigo,” I said, “pero no comprendo.” I hear, but I don’t understand. At last my two years of Spanish had paid off! It was worth it for the surprised look on Crawley’s face—to see that, as Howie would put it, I was only half the moron he thought I was.

  “Great,” mumbled the Schwa. “Now he’s really gonna be pissed off.”

  But instead of saying anything, Crawley put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. All the dogs came running.

  As they crowded around him, jockeying for position, he touched each of them on the head and announced: “Prudence, Temperance, Justice, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Charity.” He took a breath, then continued: “Envy, Sloth, Anger, Lust, Gluttony, Pride, and Avarice. Do you understand now, or shall I get you a translator?”

  “You want each of us to walk seven dogs each, every day.”

  “Gold star for you.”

  Crawley peered at me, but I just returned his unpleasant gaze. “Why not Greed?” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Avarice is Greed, right? That’s the way I learned the seven deadly sins. So why not just name the dog Greed?”

  “Don’t you know anything?” Crawley growled. “Avarice is a much better name for a dog.”

  He spun his wheelchair and rolled into the deeper recesses of his apartment. “Leashes are hanging in the kitchen.” An
d he was gone.

  At first we tried to walk them two at a time, but they were so strong, so untrained, and so excited to be outside, they practically pulled us into oncoming traffic. There were no shortcuts. We each could only handle one dog at a time. Walking dogs for no pay for two hours a day wasn’t exactly my idea of fun. But the Schwa and I did it. We could have gotten out of it. We could have just told our parents what we had done, and taken whatever punishment they dealt out. Even if Crawley went to the police, they wouldn’t do much about it—especially after we had shown what decent guys we were by volunteering to walk his dogs for those first few days. Still, we kept on doing it. Maybe it’s because there was a kind of a mystique to it, walking the infamous Old Man Crawley’s dogs. Everyone knew whose dogs they were—it’s not like the neighborhood is teeming with Afghans. Somehow it made us important. Or maybe we kept on doing it because we gave him our word. I can’t speak for the Schwa, but for me, my word had never really meant much of anything. I can’t count all the times I gave someone my word, then flaked out. This time was different, though, because if I didn’t keep my word, Crawley would be able to sit in his dark apartment and gloat. He’d see it as proof that I was at the shallow end of the gene pool, and I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, no matter how many barking sins I had to walk.

  “Hey, Bonano,” said Wendell Tiggor from across the street while we walked Charity and Gluttony that first week. “So I like your new girlfriend,” he says, pointing to the dog. “She’s got real animal attraction.”

  “We’d let you have one,” I told him, “but we don’t got one called Stupidity.” The Schwa and I high-fived as best we could with two dogs pulling us down the street.