Okay for Now

by Gary D. Schmidt

  The Snowy Heron: Missing. Mr. Powell won't tell me where.

  Total removed from Birds of America: Six.

  Total returned to Birds of America: One.

  Total to be returned to Birds of America: Five.

  Terrific.

  "When you're considering gesture," said Mr. Powell, "you're not imagining the birds as if they're posing for you. You're imagining them moving across the page instead of staying put. Your pencil is going to show them not only at the moment of the picture, but the moment before and the moment that is going to come after."

  I looked at Mr. Powell.

  He started to laugh. "Try this: You're not going to draw a picture of the bird. You're going to draw a picture of the bird's flight line."

  "How do I do that?"

  "Don't think of the bird as a flat image. Think of it the whole way around, even the parts that you don't see. Then think of how all the different pieces of the bird are working with or against each other. Think how the body of the bird wants to fall..."

  "And the wings want to keep it up."

  "Exactly. All movement relies on that kind of tension. You show the movement by suggesting the tension."

  "And how do I do that?"

  That was when we looked at the Forked-Tailed Petrels.

  Things at Washington Irving Junior High School were going mostly okay.

  My Geography: The Story of the World was as clean as you could expect after half a year. Mr. Barber still checked it out, leaning down over me when I was working on the Chapter Review Map about India. I could smell his coffee, and even though it didn't smell as good as Mrs. Windermere's—which she percolated before I came—it still smelled pretty good. In world history, Mr. McElroy had found eight filmstrips about the history of the Philippines. The record pinged away at us just about every class.

  Terrific.

  In English, Miss Cowper was throwing us into the Introduction to Poetry Unit like it was as all-fired important as the moon shot. You know, there are good reasons to learn how to read. Poetry isn't one of them. I mean, so what if two roads go two ways in a wood? So what? Who cares if it made all that big a difference? What difference? And why should I have to guess what the difference is? Isn't that what he's supposed to say?

  Why can't poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?

  In math, Mrs. Verne selected a group of students who had shown Excellence and Promise to work together on Advanced Algebra. Guess who was in it? Lil too.

  You know how that feels?

  In Mr. Ferris's physical science class we were distilling aspirins, very large aspirins, which by the time the last bell rang Mr. Ferris said he needed. Clarence was rocking his little hooves off these days because the moon shot was still on go-ahead, and it looked like it wouldn't be long before there were human footprints on the lunar surface, as Mr. Ferris kept reminding us. When we asked him if making aspirin was as important as men going to the moon, he rubbed his head and looked kind of painfully at us and said, "Believe me, aspirin is pretty darn important."

  And in case you're wondering how things have been going with Coach Reed, January and February were mostly okay, too. I filled in all the Presidential Physical Fitness charts for him, in both periods. He'd call out the numbers, and I'd write them down where they were supposed to be. When he had to do the Written Comments at the end of the charts, he told me what to write, and I did it. I told him maybe my spelling wasn't going to be all that terrific, but he said he didn't care.

  A few days into this, he brought me a new gym shirt so that I didn't have to wear my undershirt anymore. He handed it to me one morning after we finished a period's chart.

  "Thanks," I said. "My brother isn't talking much these days. And he dreams a lot."

  "Go shower," he said. "You'll be late for your next class."

  There are two Forked-Tailed Petrels. They're in the middle of a green, stormy sea, and the waves are about as high as they're flying. They're heading closer, and their sharp beaks are open, because they're calling to each other kind of desperately.

  "Look at the way the wind is blowing the waves," said Mr. Powell. "Anything odd about it?"

  I shook my head.

  "Look again," he said. "Pay attention to the composition."

  He was right. Two winds were blowing the waves in two directions, completely apart.

  "So how are the birds' bodies responding to those winds?"

  The two winds were pushing them in different directions, but the petrels were using them to meet in the center of the picture. That's what the picture was about: meeting, even though you might be headed in different directions.

  All movement relies on that kind of tension, you know.

  Because of the snow, we missed most of Lucas's appointments in Kingston. My father said he didn't want to chance driving off the highway in this stuff, and he wasn't about to take a day off just for a doctor's appointment, not with Big Bucks Ballard breathing down his neck. So Lucas would have to do the best he could.

  My mother did the best she could by calling up the doctor's office and asking what to do and filling the prescription for the ointment for Lucas's eyes and checking the stumps every day to be sure there was no redness or smell of infection.

  You can imagine what that was like.

  Lucas mostly sat around the kitchen with a blanket over his lap. Not because he was cold. He didn't talk hardly at all. None of us could know what it was like, he said. We weren't there. So what's the point of talking?

  When he did talk, he was his old jerk self again.

  When I told him about the moon shot and how one day there would be human footprints on the lunar surface, he said, "I guess they won't be mine."

  And when my mother asked me to run down to Spicer's Deli for more milk, Lucas said, "I'd run down for you, but..."

  And when Christopher said he was thinking about going out for track in the spring—which is something like a miracle since Christopher has never gone out for anything in his whole life—Lucas said, "I bet I could run my legs off if I tried—oh, wait a minute."

  Every time he said something, that was the last thing anyone said for a long time.

  Which is what had probably happened the second Saturday of February, when I had been working on the gestures of the Forked-Tailed Petrels and I was starting to get them just right so that they looked like they were about to dance with each other and I came back home and said to my mother and Christopher, "I think I got them dancing," and Lucas said, "I bet you couldn't do that for me," and the Silence Came Down and I thought of the Yellow Shank and I said, "Shut up, Lucas."

  I'm not lying. I said, "Shut up, Lucas."

  He turned his face toward me. "What did you say?"

  "Are you deaf too?" I said.

  He threw the blanket off his lap. He tried to raise himself up in his wheelchair. "Listen, little brother—"

  "I can hear," I said.

  "I got my legs blown off, in case you forgot."

  "How could I forget? You tell us about it every day."

  I think if Lucas could have gotten out of the chair, he would have pulled my face off.

  My mother had her hand up to her mouth. But she didn't stop us.

  The thing about the Forked-Tailed Petrels is that they only have a moment. The winds are blowing opposite ways, and each one is riding a different wind, and there's only this one moment when they can meet. It's all-fired important.

  They can't miss it when it comes.

  "Doug," said Lucas. He said this in a kind of snarl.

  "You don't even try," I said.

  "Try what?" More snarling. "I can't grow new legs."

  "You have two arms," I said. "They used to be strong."

  "You used to be able to take me," Christopher said.

  "And the doctor said that you should try leaving the bandage off your eyes," said my mother. "Maybe..."

  "I'm blind."

  I walked over to my brother. I reached for the bandage across his eyes,
and when he felt me near him he tried to stop me. Snarling. But I was a lot stronger than him now. I hadn't thought about it, but I was. So I grabbed his arms, pushed them away, and pulled the bandage off.

  My mother started to cry.

  Most of Lucas's face was still the shiny pink of half-healed skin. His eyes glistened with the ointment smeared over them. No eyebrows. No lashes. His eyes blinked, and blinked, and blinked.

  "You want to stop me?" I said, or maybe I snarled. "Try. Hitch yourself up in that wheelchair. Try."

  He didn't move. He kept blinking.

  "Try," said Christopher.

  Lucas blinked again. He turned his face toward my mother. "I think I see you," he said.

  The next Saturday it snowed, but it didn't matter; Christopher and I carried Lucas into the pickup, and Lucas, my mother, and my father drove to Kingston early. Lucas didn't have the bandage over his eyes. He kept turning his face from side to side, blinking, trying to make things out.

  And he was smiling.

  I already told you about his smile, right?

  After the deliveries, I drew the Forked-Tailed Petrels with smiles.

  "Birds," said Mr. Powell, "tend not to have expressions on their faces."

  "This is their one chance," I said. "In a second they're going to be blown past each other, and who knows what will happen next?"

  Mr. Powell leaned down to my drawing. "In that case, smiles are appropriate."

  But none of the petrel smiles could touch Lucas's smile or my mother's smile when I got home that afternoon, or mine, probably, when I heard that the Kingston doctor thought, really thought, that Lucas's eyes might heal, and he was going to send him to a specialist down to Middletown—

  "He was going to send him to some guy in New York City, but I set him straight on that," said my father.

  —and meanwhile, the doctor had some exercises he wanted Lucas to really work at for his arms and upper chest and Lucas said, "I may need your help, little brother," and I said, "Sure." He reached out his hand and I took it and we shook, and his hand felt ... strong.

  ***

  You know, I don't think the Forked-Tailed Petrels are blowing past each other. The more I think about it, it seems to me that they're probably circling, like two wrestlers. And when the waves and the winds smack at them, they spread their wings and skitter around and then they try to come back together again. That's what I think they're doing.

  On Monday, James Russell was counting my squat thrusts for the Presidential Physical Fitness chart when he said, "I hear you've been drawing birds at the library."

  "Yup," I said, kind of breathless. It's hard to talk when you're doing as many squat thrusts as you can in four minutes.

  "Audubon's stuff," he said.

  Nodded.

  "You know, some of the plates are missing from that book," he said.

  Nodded again. I was at sixty-three and still had about a minute to go, which, if you ask me, isn't bad.

  "I know where one of them is," he said.

  Nodded again. Principal Peattie's office, I figured. I'd seen the Brown Pelican too.

  "Puffins," he said.

  I stopped the squat thrusts.

  "My father bought it from the town."

  I'm not lying: I added another forty-two squat thrusts before Coach Reed called time.

  If I had James Russell's father's job, I wouldn't talk about it. Probably James felt the same way, because he never talked about it. And when he told me what it was, he said that he was only telling me because I'd probably figure it out the minute I walked into his house. But I couldn't talk about it to anyone, he said. Promise?

  I said I'd keep his secret, and probably you shouldn't tell anyone either.

  James Russell's father is the First Flutist of the New York Philharmonic.

  Do you know what my father would say if he knew that?

  And James was right: you could tell as soon as you walked into the house. I mean, how many houses have flute music playing on the stereo in the middle of the afternoon, and loud? And how many houses have books about flutes right out on the coffee table that anyone could see right off, and sheet music everywhere, and this huge piano and next to it a music stand with a silver flute across it?

  I'm not lying, you could tell pretty quick.

  What you might not be able to tell pretty quick when you meet Mr. Russell is that he is the First Flutist of the New York Philharmonic, because Mr. Russell is bigger than Joe Pepitone and Mickey Mantle put together. And I don't mean he's fat, because he isn't. He's just huge. He stands over you like this little mountain, and he's got this dark beardy shrubbery all around the peak, and arms like pines, and legs like oaks, and feet the size of small lakes. His hands look too big to hold anything but a boulder—one in each.

  And I said, "You play the flute?"

  And he said, "Sweetly and beautifully."

  Then he showed me.

  He was right. Sweetly and beautifully.

  He started with Mozart, who isn't as bad as you might think. Then some Brahms, who is as bad as you might think. Then some Joplin, who's good, and then some Aaron Copland, who Mr. Russell said was his favorite composer even though he didn't write anything for a flutist. And then he did some Beatles stuff. It didn't sound exactly like the Beatles, but it wasn't bad. And when he finished, I asked him to play the Copland again, and he smiled and did.

  Copland knew how to say what he wanted to say. Unlike certain poets I could mention.

  Then James took me upstairs. He had a house big enough to fit fourteen of The Dumps into. Maybe more. His own room was the size of our downstairs, and he had his own bathroom and tile with the grout still around it. And on the third floor, they had this room that ran the whole length of the house, about as big as left field in Yankee Stadium, which I have walked on, by the way. And right where the stairs came up to this room, the Large-Billed Puffins were hanging.

  Okay, this is going to sound dumb. You know how sometimes when you haven't seen someone in a long time, and suddenly there he is, and you look at him, and for a second it's almost like he's a stranger and then that second is gone and it's all the same? Sort of like when Holling Hoodhood came by and dropped Joe Pepitone's jacket off last summer? That's what happened, except that at the same moment, Mr. Russell was downstairs playing that Copland piece again. And there were those fat puffins, looking like chumps, bumbling around like they had no idea how to get on in the world, looking dumb and stupid, and so beautiful that I wanted to ... nothing.

  "They're kind of dumb-looking," said James Russell.

  "Yeah," I said.

  I couldn't take my eyes off them.

  And still, the music played sweetly.

  "They don't even look like they can swim," he said.

  The music played beautifully.

  Tuesday after school, I went home to do all the homework that I wouldn't be able to do that night because Mrs. Daugherty had called and wondered if I could come over on such short notice, and so now I had the Daugherty kids to read to and we were up to this place where this spider is going to die and a pig has to get her egg sac. I know—it sounds dumb. But it wasn't bad. So I had to get all my homework done before I went, especially for Mrs. Verne, who had already dropped two people from Advanced Algebra because they didn't get all their assignments in on time, and I wasn't going to be Number Three.

  But on Wednesday, I went home again with James Russell. It was raining, and we got pretty wet, walking home with Otis Bottom too, since his house is only a couple of blocks away from James Russell's. And for the record, Otis Bottom's father has a job you could talk about: he's a doctor, which explains why his house is not on the same side of town as The Dump. I guess that being a doctor and being a flutist with the New York Philharmonic pay pretty good.

  At James Russell's house, we visited the Large-Billed Puffins like they were old friends. Then we played speed chess up on the third floor, which I was no good at but he didn't wipe me out too fast. And he had a great dar
tboard up there, and I only threw a few into the wall instead of into the target. And then we played regular chess and I was better at that but he still won. And all the while Mr. Russell was playing Copland downstairs, and the stupid puffins were bobbling about in the water, sweetly and beautifully.

  On Thursday I stayed late with Coach Reed to finish the Presidential Physical Fitness charts. "Thanks," he said when he signed his name on the last one.

  "Sure," I said.

  I stood up to go.

  "Swieteck," he said.

  "Yeah."

  "How's your brother?"

  Surprised?

  "His eyes are getting better," I said.

  "That's not what I mean."

  "I know. He still dreams."

  Coach Reed looked at me a little while, his mouth working. "Go on home," he said. "And thanks for writing up the charts."

  Then the Forked-Tailed Petrels flew a little closer.

  "Do you dream too?" I said.

  Coach Reed looked down. He started to fuss with a bag of softballs.

  A long time with the fussing.

  Then: "There was a kid, younger than you."

  More fussing with softballs.

  "And an old man, and a young girl. Probably the kid's sister. I don't know."

  Fussing with softballs.

  "They come every night."

  "That's what it's like for Lucas," I said.

  He shook his head. "I don't think so. Not like these three."

  "Maybe they want you to do something," I said.

  He stopped fussing with softballs.

  "Maybe they want you to help someone."

  He looked at me. "Maybe they do," he said.

  That's what I mean about the Forked-Tailed Petrels circling around and around each other, until they finally meet.

  On Saturday, we had another snowstorm.

  Terrific.

  Before I even left the house, there was eight inches on the ground, and I'm not talking light and fluffy here. I looked out the bedroom window and I said to Lucas—who was already doing his exercises at the side of his bed—"I'm going to be soaked up to my knees in three steps," and he said, "Wouldn't happen to me!"