A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag

by Gordon Korman

  Outside, Sean finally got the chance to take a look at Gramp, and realized what a perfect poet his grandfather had become. The arguments at The Euripides had made his eyes wild, and he wore an ancient, battered suit that looked like it had been thrown over Niagara Falls and sun-dried in the Mojave Desert.

  It was quite a warm night so, after Raymond performed the introductions, they adjourned to a nearby park bench, where Ashley held her first-ever meeting with a poet. She asked dozens of questions, most of which Gramp didn’t really answer, so Sean wasn’t quite sure what kind of impression Gavin Gunhold was making. Raymond, apparently, didn’t think things were going too well, as he was constantly looking up at the sky. He eventually left the meeting altogether to strike up a conversation with a bum who claimed he’d been to Theamelpos.

  “I should’ve known no one who lives in a park could have gone to Theamelpos,” Raymond complained to Sean on his return to their bench. “They all win lotteries and become bank presidents and stuff. He hit me up for a quarter, and it turns out he thinks Theamelpos is in Connecticut.”

  “Take off on me again and you’re dead!” Sean hissed.

  The boys didn’t get an indication of the night’s success or failure until it was time to head back to Long Island.

  “Mr. Gunhold, meeting you was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” said Ashley honestly. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Call me Gavin,” Gramp said generously.

  Ashley raved about Gavin Gunhold all the way home. Sean ducked out at a McDonald’s near the station until Gramp came in on the next train, flushed with victory.

  “Now, that was a good evening,” he declared, stretching out his arms.

  “You were thrown out of a restaurant,” Sean pointed out.

  “We showed those robots. Your friend Ashley’s really something.”

  Sean smiled sadly. “I know.”

  ***

  “Household Security” by Gavin Gunhold

  As a positive step against crime

  I bought a watchdog,

  And am training him personally.

  This week we study full contact karate.

  “It’s fantastic!” said Ashley honestly. “Gavin’s stuff just blows my mind.”

  Sean flushed. “He’s a — uh — developing artist.”

  Ashley nodded enthusiastically. The two were eating lunch at Miami Beach, listening to the tantrums from the poker game and the cheers from the tray-surfing. Ashley, a serious student of modern poetry, wasn’t paying attention to these distractions, except when Steve surfed. Then she would stand on her chair, waving and shouting encouragement. It was turning Sean’s stomach so badly he could hardly eat.

  Raymond had had to rush off to help Miss Ritchie with some filing. This was not the first time, either. Miss Ritchie seemed to have plenty of odd jobs for Raymond, both at lunch and after classes.

  “It’s blackmail,” was Raymond’s opinion. “She’s got me by the throat because King Phidor, the bozo, couldn’t run a country worth beans. So all Jardine can say is, ‘Sure thing, Miss Ritchie. I’ll do your filing. No problem.’ She’s a very sick individual.”

  Nikki came by, and instantly Sean was on his guard. There was a bit of a cold war going on between the Delancey children lately, since Sean now refused to talk to Nikki, and Nikki seemed equally up to the task of not talking to Sean. This left a lot more space in the dinner conversation for miracles of technology (Mr. Delancey), Brooklyn (Gramp), and “Why can’t the students at DeWitt appreciate SACGEN?” (Mrs. Delancey).

  “So how did your big date with Steve go?” Nikki asked Ashley, smiling maliciously at Sean.

  “It didn’t,” Ashley replied. “I had to go into the city with Raymond and Sean, so we canceled.”

  “That’s terrible!” Nikki exclaimed. The broken date didn’t bother her so much as the fact that her brother had stolen her grin, leaving her with a look of dismay.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ashley. “We’re going out this Friday for sure!”

  Once again, Nikki had possession of the grin, while Sean reflected that his lunch was only half eaten, and he had completely lost his appetite.

  ***

  Sean was riding home that night on the local transit from the DeWitt Mall, carrying a bag of groceries for his mother. He was thinking about the injustice of Ashley’s falling in love with Steve, who never got off the bench, when Sean, the star, was available. Squinting through the dirty scratched glass of the bus window, he noticed the lights were still on at DeWitt High. Someone was carrying a large carton from a stack in the parking lot into the school building. Then he saw the scooter leaning against the fence. He pulled the cord just as the bus was passing its stop, and caught a few mild curses from the driver as he grabbed his parcel and headed for the school.

  “What’s this all about, Raymond?”

  “It’s a scientific study,” Raymond replied, his voice strained by the effort of his lifting. “To see how many hundred-pound crates the average high school student can carry around before he drops dead. Just inside that door, there’s a scientist with a stopwatch.”

  “No. Seriously.”

  “Miss Ritchie volunteered me to carry in this beautiful two-thousand-pound paper shipment because of my Pefkakia project,” Raymond puffed. He made a face. “And you can’t know what a wonderful feeling it is that children are going to have supplies for their education because of Jardine’s efforts tonight.”

  “Can she do that?” Sean asked.

  “Because Jardine wants to go to Theamelpos, he opted not to say, ‘Stuff your shipment, Miss Ritchie.’” He stood up again. “Grab a box, Delancey. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Why me? I never did a project on Pefkakia.”

  “Well, you can’t just stand there and watch while I kill myself here.”

  “Why not?” Sean grinned. “You look good doing manual labour. It suits you.”

  Raymond looked up at the sky. “That’s right. Send Jardine a sadist. Terrific. Now grab a box.”

  “These are hundred-pound cartons,” Sean protested, really enjoying the look of aggravation on his English partner’s face.

  Raymond was livid. “Listen, Delancey, I’ve been at this for over an hour, and I let my hernia insurance lapse, so I’m in no mood for your cute little jokes. If you don’t help me, I’m going to order a twenty-seven-inch pizza to be delivered to your house at two o’clock in the morning. So just grab a box, huh?”

  Fortunately, Raymond had already done most of the work, but it still took the boys half an hour. Sean’s muscles were aching, but Raymond was in such pain that Sean had to drive home.

  “It’s just like riding a bike, Delancey, except that you don’t have to pedal. I’d do it, but I feel like I’ve been run over by a train. Even my cramps have cramps!”

  So Sean took over the helm, piloting the scooter carefully through back streets as Raymond slumped at the rear with Sean’s grocery bag, holding an impassioned conversation with the sky.

  “You know, Raymond, Ashley and Steve have another date this Friday.”

  “To a person in my condition you give this kind of news?” Raymond asked. “What’s our plan?”

  “There is no plan,” Sean called back. “It’s stupid to try to keep them apart. First of all, it’s childish; second, it’s a rotten thing to do to both Ashley and Steve; and third, it’ll never work. How many times can we dynamite their dates?”

  Raymond looked disgusted. “This is your department, Delancey. Jardine relies on you to keep Ashley away from the Cementmobile. You can’t give up now. You’ve become one of the master strategists of the twentieth century — giving the prize to Entwistle, taking her to meet our dead poet, dreaming up Tank. Think!”

  “There’s no point. Even if we could throw a monkey wrench into date after date, which is impossible, they’d start to get suspicious.”

  Raymond looked up to the sky. “A quitter. Thanks.”

  “Hey! I’m not a quitter! I just kn
ow when it’s over!”

  Raymond shrugged expansively. “You want Ashley to get together with Cementhead? Who’s Jardine to argue? I even volunteer to play the violin for them. You know, you’re allowed to go faster than five miles an hour.”

  Sean bristled. “Hey, I’m being cautious, okay?”

  “I need the breeze. It eases my pains.”

  As he rounded the corner onto his own block, Sean could see the even spray of the Stead-E-Rain sprinklers refracting the light of a nearby streetlamp.

  “Far out,” said Raymond. “A rainbow at night.”

  The scooter was hard to control because the road was covered by at least two inches of water, as the sewers were unable to keep up with the output of the Stead-E-Rain. Their shoes and the bottoms of their pants were soaked from the splashing of the scooter.

  Sean was getting nervous. “Raymond, I’m having trouble steering in all this water!”

  “No problem, Delancey. You’re doing fine.” Suddenly, he pointed. “There’s a whole crowd in front of your house. Did you ever see so many umbrellas?”

  Involuntarily, Sean slammed on the brakes, and the scooter went into a long skid, cutting a wide arc across the street, spraying water everywhere.

  A big Lincoln Continental turned the corner. Sean swerved to the right, jumped the curb, and ditched himself, Raymond, and the scooter in a tall hedge of unpruned bushes. The groceries went flying, scattering in all directions.

  Gingerly, Raymond sat up, pulling a stray branch away from his face. “Not bad, Delancey. Next lesson we’ll study not crashing.”

  Sean pulled himself away from the scooter and stepped down. The ground was so wet from the sprinklers that his sneaker sank in the mud. He flipped his soaking hair back from his eyes and regarded the wreckage of the groceries. The eggs were all broken, and the dehydrated milk was hydrating in the street. As he watched, the oatmeal broke out of its box and began oozing in all directions as though it were a swamp creature with a mind of its own.

  Gramp’s face appeared above the top of the hedge. “Sean! Jardine! Are you all right?”

  “We had a little accident,” Sean admitted. Raymond tried to sit up. “I’m stuck,” he observed.

  “What’s going on at the house?” Sean asked.

  Gramp snorted. “Schnitzenberger’s got together a lynch mob of neighbors to complain about the rainy season. Seems he doesn’t buy your father’s ‘miracle of technology’ speech.” He grinned. “You should see Schnitzenberger’s face. If it gets him that mad, it must be a miracle of technology!”

  Raymond was still engaged in the process of disentangling himself from the hedge. Finally, hopelessly caged in by scratchy branches, he gave up and lay back in the brush and mud, folding his arms in front of him. He might have slept there, too, if Sean and his grandfather hadn’t dragged him out, hosed him down, and set him up in the Delancey spare room.

  ***

  Just after seven, Sean was awakened by the insistent ringing of the telephone. No. There was no way he was getting out of his warm bed to tell some broke college student he wasn’t interested in subscribing to American Quantity Surveyor magazine. He was going to sleep until ten minutes before school. Longer, maybe.

  The ringing stopped, and then his mother was knocking on his bedroom door. “Sean, telephone. Someone named Ashley.”

  Sean set a record getting to the phone. Eat your heart out, Cementhead. She’s finally realized who the real man is. He picked up the receiver. “Ashley — hi.”

  “Sean, I have the most incredible news! You’re not going to be able to believe it!”

  “Yeah?” Sean prompted expectantly.

  “I was in the city last night, and I ran into an old friend. He’s got a job with Spice of Life — you know, the TV show? He’s an idea-thinker-upper — I forget the official name. He comes up with ideas for interviews. So guess what?”

  “What?” Sean asked suspiciously.

  “I told him all about Gavin, and they’re going to interview him on Spice of Life next week! Isn’t that fabulous?”

  Sean almost dropped the phone. “I — I — I’ll put Raymond on!”

  Raymond had other ideas. “The way I feel this morning, I wouldn’t get up to talk to anybody short of the Greek Minister of Tourism.”

  “Raymond, Ashley’s set up a TV interview for Gavin Gunhold!”

  “Hi, Ash,” Raymond said into the phone. “Yeah, I just heard. That’s great!”

  “Great?!” Sean hissed. “It’s terrible! Tell her no way!”

  Raymond ignored him. “Beautiful, Ash. Nice work. He’ll be there.”

  “No, he won’t!” Sean was in a frenzy. “Cancel! Cancel!”

  “Oh, I agree. He’ll be amazing on TV.”

  “How can you be so stupid? Give me that phone!”

  “I’ve got to go, Ash. ’Bye.” Just as Sean reached for the receiver, Raymond hung up. “Cool out, Delancey.”

  “Cool out? Our dead poet has a live interview, and you want me to cool out?”

  Raymond shook his head. “He’s not dead anymore, thanks to you. Gramp is Gavin Gunhold. Think, Delancey! What starts with T and rhymes with eamelpos?”

  Sean frowned. “I don’t see how forcing my grandfather to impersonate a poet on national television will get you to Theamelpos.”

  Raymond looked exasperated. “We discovered him, which wouldn’t be worth beans if he was a total nobody. But as soon as he goes on that show, he’s a somebody. It’ll make points with Kerr. I’ll get the kid who loaned me the machine gun to tape the interview on his VCR, and then we’ll have a poetry assignment with accompanying videocassette material. They’ve got to send us to Theamelpos if we’ve got accompanying videocassette material.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Sean. “Before we were just lying to Ashley and Kerr. Now we’re going to be lying to millions of people on network TV.”

  “That’s a downer way of looking at it. There’s only one true test for this. We talk to Gramp and see what he thinks.” He opened the door to reveal a pyjama-clad Patrick Delancey, crouched right there with a hand to his ear.

  “Gramp, were you spying on us?” Sean demanded.

  “What are you complaining about? It saved you the trouble of coming to find me and con me into it. Show a little respect for a TV personality.”

  “So you’ll do it?” asked Raymond.

  “Of course I’ll do it,” said Gramp. “Weather systems develop so slowly that it leaves us a lot of spare time, Jardine. Besides prune juice and fine cigars, my poetry is all I’ve got these days.” He assumed a smile that was remarkably boyish for a man of his years. “And I’ve always wanted to be on television.”

  ***

  Late Friday afternoon, Sean was just sitting down to work on his map of Central America for geography class when Raymond showed up at the door. “I was just starting on my map,” said Sean hopefully. “It looks like a lot of work.”

  “I came right over,” said Raymond, “to let you know how much Jardine appreciates all your efforts to prevent Ashley from going out with Cementhead tonight.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Raymond. You know we didn’t do anything.”

  Raymond pretended to be surprised. “Oh! That must be why I saw the Cementmobile getting a hot-wax treatment at the carwash in the mall. And, you know, that would explain Cementhead buying a brand new muscle shirt. Jardine certainly wishes them a lovely evening. But with Cementhead, the man born with a horseshoe up his diaper, how can it miss?” His brow clouded. “Grab your coat, Delancey. You’re coming with me.”

  “I refuse to follow Ashley and Steve around on their date.”

  Raymond shook his head. “It’s not that at all. We’ve got a long night before us, and we’d better get a head start sulking. Jardine requires your presence, because you are the only other person in the universe who realizes just how terrible this really is.”

  Sean thought it over. There was no refuting the logic, but he sure didn’t feel like spending a whole ev
ening listening to Raymond crab and complain. He was upset enough as it was over Ashley and Steve. “You know, my mom’s making a big dinner tonight, and —”

  Mrs. Delancey peered out of the kitchen. “No, I’m not, dear. We’re having leftover liver, remember?”

  Sean turned back to Raymond. “Why do you want to go out somewhere with me? Since this is supposed to be my fault, you should be avoiding me.”

  “I’m not blaming you,” said Raymond. “You were made not to do anything by them.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “So they could get a few more licks in at Jardine.”

  With a huge sigh, Sean went for his coat. There really was no avoiding Raymond Jardine, not even in moments of stress.

  Raymond decided that they should grab some dinner at the Underwood Colonial Diner in Massapequa.

  “Why there?” Sean asked.

  “Because they have the worst food on Long Island,” Raymond replied grimly.

  After dinner, they went to a broken-down theater in Bellmore to see an old black-and-white detective film from the 1950s.

  “It’s the lousiest movie I’ve ever seen,” Raymond explained as they bought their tickets.

  When the movie was over, they picked up two jumbo orders of stale popcorn and went to hang out in Schuyler Park.

  “The ugliest place in Nassau County,” Raymond reasoned.

  They left the park at ten and returned to the Delancey TV room to cap off the night watching a Gunsmoke rerun dubbed in Serbo-Croatian on cable, and sipping enormous glasses of tomato juice.

  “Why tomato juice?” Sean asked as he headed for the kitchen.

  “Jardine hates tomato juice,” Raymond replied.

  They watched in silence for a while, then Raymond scratched his head thoughtfully. “It’s not too late, you know. I can still call the police and tell them I’ve planted a five-megaton hydrogen bomb somewhere in southern Long Island.”

  Sean stared dully right through the TV set. Ashley Bach was just a girl. Like any other girl. What was the big deal?

  “They’d call in the National Guard and evacuate everyone,” Raymond mused. “Ashley and Cementhead would have to rejoin their families at some evacuation station.” He paused. “Of course, they’d also evacuate Jardine.”