Bucking the Sarge

by Christopher Paul Curtis

  Even though they were lame I’d tell whoever made them, “That’s tight, good luck at the judging tomorrow, I’m sure you’ve got a good chance at winning.” It’s all right to offer hope to people who didn’t have a chance; they should get something for their efforts.

  Then I saw Shayla’s project and the truth hit me; mine was good, but hers was better. Not just a little better, but way, way, way better.

  And the worst thing was that she knew it and knew that I knew it too.

  Shayla and Eloise Exum walked by my project and Shayla read my displays and looked through my slides and had the nerve to let out a sigh of relief. She looked at me through those thick, black, beautiful eyelashes and said, “That’s really good, Luther.”

  If you look at just the words you might not understand their real meaning, you might not see what was really happening. You had to listen real hard, and even kind of imagine it, but if you really wanted to hear it, it was there, that taunting tone that she only halfway tried to keep out of her voice. And then there was the way she smiled when she said it. If you really look at a smile it ain’t nothing but a showing of teeth, and I’ve watched the Nature Channel enough to know that tooth showing is nothing but an act of aggression.

  Then she really did it, her smile got even more aggressive and she said, “Good luck at the judging tomorrow, I’m sure you’ve got a good chance of winning.”

  Aw, no. No she didn’t!

  She’s even throwing at me the same line I use on the losers! In my book there’s nothing worse than being hypocritical or two-faced and when you add that to all of Shayla’s other character flaws she was just too much to take.

  All I could think to do was put my nose in the air, sniff real loud and say, “What’s that I smell?” Sniff, sniff. “Did someone open a can of embalming fluid in here?” A tight comeback, but probably not the kind of thing you want to say to the woman of your dreams.

  I was completely depressed. All I wanted to do was figure out a way to break into the school that night and destroy her project. I might’ve done it too, but with her project being called “A Demonstration on the Problems of Nuclear Waste” I was afraid I might mess around and get myself radiated. And if I did that what would Miss Madagascar say?

  I stopped by the Sarge’s house on my way home for my daily briefing. I thought I was being on the down-low but she picked up on something right away.

  “What’s eating you?”

  Maybe it’s a mother-child thing, maybe when me and Miss Madagascar get together and start populating the earth with sturdy little African children I’ll know more about it but for now I can’t understand how the Sarge knows whenever something is bothering me. I can try to be as cool with it as possible but it seems like when I come near her I’m wearing a big sign that says Troubled.

  I told her, “Nothing.”

  “Look, I don’t have time for games, either tell me or don’t, but don’t fall off into that I-gotta-pull-teeth-to-get-the-information thing.”

  “It’s really nothing, I just don’t think I’m going to win the science fair this year.”

  Her eyes rolled.

  “You don’t have to tell me, I know, that’s sucker path action.”

  She said, “You said it, not me. But what makes you so sure you’re not going to win?”

  I said, “Shayla Patrick. I don’t know how, but I swear her father must’ve hired some professional help with her project, there’s no way a kid coulda put that thing together alone.”

  “So you get some professional help next year and beat her back.”

  “I want to win first place a second time in a row. I’ve already got a spot set up to hang this year’s first-place medal on my wall and then I can win next year’s and have a three-peat going.”

  When you say things like this you have to be careful not to sound whiny, I mean between the new hormones and me faking it some of the time I was getting a lot of bass in my voice and I usually remember to keep it nice and low, but say something like this and your voice can’t help cracking, then getting weak.

  She sighed and looked at me. “Is Bea Scott still the head of science and math at your school?”

  “Yes.” Ms. Scott was close to four thousand years old and they were forcing her out because her mind was like the transmission of a 1973 Buick, sometimes it would go into drive but most times it was good and comfortable just sitting in park.

  “So she’s still the one who judges the science fairs?”

  “Yes, but this is the last year she’s doing it, they’re making her quit.”

  The Sarge told me, “Go get your crew ready for swimming. Quit worrying about nonsense like that stupid project, that’s not what’s important in life.”

  I knew more was going to come. That’s not the way the Sarge ends a conversation.

  She said, “You know what? I’ma use this as a lesson to show you what kind of things really are worth you expending your energies on.”

  Uh-oh! “What does that mean?”

  “Look,” she said, “I know you and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, and I’m not going to ascribe it all to the fact that you’re extremely immature for your age or that you still look at things with a naivete that long ago lost its charm.

  “I know that people can have different philosophies about life. That’s one of the things that makes it interesting. We can honestly disagree about things and that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily right each and every time and you’re always wrong. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, yes, but there always is that other time.”

  The sad thing about this is that she was dead serious.

  “I know you’re into philosophy so let me share a little something with you, something that if you choose to pay attention to will do a lot to make your life a whole lot smoother. But of course I know it’s one of those things that’s going to go smack into your right ear hole, then come barreling out of your left. But at least you won’t have the excuse of saying you’ve never been told.”

  I felt like getting a Q-tip to clean my ears so this great information she was about to share would have a smooth and easy path to barrel out of the left side of my head.

  “Now, you may not believe it, you may want to make things more complex than they are, but believe me, the truth is out there, and it’s very simple.

  “Since you’re one who likes to throw all those trite pseudophilosophical sayings into your conversation, let me throw one right back at you. Do you know what saying I’m talking about?”

  I thought, very quietly and very carefully, “Could it be ‘There’s no fool like an old fool’?”

  But I said, “No, I don’t.”

  She said, “The saying is ‘It’s not what you know that’s important, it’s who you know.’”

  The soulfully deep stare let me know I was supposed to be impressed.

  Nice try.

  “You hold on for a little while and if you’re anywhere near as bright as you think you are you’ll see the importance of that saying. Need I say more?”

  I said, “No,” and let the subject drop because lots of times her lessons never come true and even when they do they’re not anything that I’d want to learn.

  I didn’t think about the Sarge’s lesson again until the prize day for last year’s science fair. I woke up dreading having to turn my title over to Shayla Patrick, but I had to go and face the music like the man that I am. I just hoped I wouldn’t cry when I got called up onstage to get second prize.

  Me and Shayla were in third hour together and you’da thought she was getting ready to win the Interstate Lotto Jackpot instead of stupid first prize in a stupid middle school science fair in a stupid little city. She had her locks down and they and she were about the most beautiful and repulsive things I’d ever seen.

  She and Eloise Exum giggled and whispered all through class and I couldn’t understand why Ms. Warren let them get away with it. I mean any fool could see that their behavior was disrupting the class.


  With the award ceremony being next period it seemed like if it didn’t hurry up and come Shayla was going to explode.

  When we got to the auditorium three people’s projects were on the stage. Bo Travis’s, my weak mess, and, fresh from the crypt, Shayla’s. Even though if she was going to be fair about it she would’ve had to give most of the credit to whatever rocket scientist and Nobel Peace Prize for Science winner her no-good rich daddy had paid to put it together for her.

  Ms. Scott came out looking even more shaky and confused than she usually does and said all the right words, the teachers were so proud, we have such great futures, life is wonderful and on and on with the words that were just designed to stop us losers from facing up to the fact that we were losers.

  Then she said, “Would the following three students please come onto the stage? Bo Travis.” Somebody yelled out, “Nice uniform, Bo, where’s your hat?”

  Ms. Scott said, “Shayla Patrick.” About nine girls clapped and whistled and cheered.

  “And Luther T. Farrell.” Someone made a loud fart sound.

  As I slinked onto the stage I thought to all those losers in the auditorium, “Go ahead, don’t recognize, hate, but you’re not going to be disappointed, you’re gonna see the greatest humiliation in the life and times of Luther T. Farrell.”

  I put my head down as Ms. Scott shook Bo’s hand, then Shayla’s. It wasn’t until later that I remembered she never even offered her hand to me.

  The three of us faced the spotlights. Bo was standing as quiet as ever. Shayla was out of control with joy but she was doing a great job to keep it under wraps.

  Between classes she’d changed into a long African dress and had her locks pinned up with this bad purple and black scarf holding them in place.

  And her smile. With the stage lights on her and her teeth so white and shiny, and her lips so full and dark and kissable-looking with just the hint of a lightly shiny lipstick on them, and with her long fingers gracefully twined together in front of her, and something sparkly all over her eyelids and cheeks, I knew I was doomed to be in love with someone who I couldn’t talk to without insulting her. I finally understood what that great philosopher, whose name escapes me at the moment, meant when she said, “Love stinks.”

  Old Lady Scott said, “In third place is a fine job done by Mr. Bo Travis.”

  When she handed him his medal Bo nodded at her once and put it around his neck. No smile, no wave, no nothing.

  Shayla grinned and clapped as loud as she could and gave him a big hug.

  Well, maybe something good was gonna come out of this after all. At least I’d finally not have to imagine what it felt like to be wrapped up in the loving arms of Ms. Shayla Night of the Living Dead Patrick.

  Ms. Scott cleared her throat. “And to the second-place winner, please don’t be discouraged, remember that the world can be unfair, but also keep in mind that the world needs young people like you who can create something as beautiful as this.”

  She was going a little overboard. My project was good, but even I wouldn’t’ve called it beautiful.

  Then she said, “And for second place, Ms. Shayla Patrick.”

  The audience gasped. Eloise Exum stood up in the front row and yelled, “No you didn’t! You know that’s not right!”

  Ms. Scott and Shayla hugged and cried. Ms. Scott was whispering something to Shayla.

  I’d won.

  I’d won!

  Don’t ask me how, but I’d won for the second year in a row!

  For a second I thought about the Sarge, about how she said who you know is more important than what you know. I wish she could’ve been here to see how wrong she was. But just as quick I forgot all about her and my heart was squeezed with joy!

  I threw my hands up in the air and yelled, “Yes! Yes! How you like me now?”

  Ms. Scott and Shayla finally let go of each other. Ms. Scott said, “Luther Farrell, I’d like to prevent you …” She paused. “I’d like to present you with this year’s first place in the science fair.”

  It was like I went into a trance. Shayla shook my hand, then sat down and smiled bravely as I walked up to the podium. Ms. Scott reached the gold medal out to me and before I had a chance to take it, it fell to the stage floor.

  I bent down to pick it up and reached it toward the lights. There’d be another nail going into my bedroom wall tonight!

  I couldn’t remember the rest of the day at school. The medal burned in my pocket like a wad of benjamins.

  When I finally got to the home I showed my medal to my crew.

  “Is it real gold?” Mr. Baker asked. “Looks fake to me.”

  I answered, “It might as well be real gold, it’s worth as much.”

  “Good work, Luther,” Mr. Foster said. “And in celebration I guess this means you can spring for some Häagen Dazs Caramel Cone Explosion ice cream for dessert tonight instead of that ice-milk crap your mother’s been foisting on us lately.”

  I laughed. “I guess so, let me go put this medal on the wall and then we’ll head out to the store.”

  I ran down to the basement and stopped in the utility room to get the hammer and one of the shiny brass nails. A gold medal deserves at least a gold-looking nail.

  As I stood holding the hammer and nail and gold medal I paused to do some musing. You know, there’s something especially lonely about a gold medal hanging all by itself on a bedroom wall, something that says “fluke,” or “beginner’s luck,” or “one in a million,” but two gold medals, now that says something completely different. That says, “Oh, yeah, baby, this is the real deal!”

  I put the nail in my mouth, stepped up on my bed and did a double take. Right next to my first medal there already was another nail. This mystery nail was just a regular old nail, it wasn’t gold.

  This must be some kind of a sign. Maybe someone was trying to tell me that there was now the possibility that I could win the science fair three times in a row.

  I put the new medal on the old nail and hammered the new nail next to them both.

  “Be patient,” I told the gold nail, “in three hundred and sixty-four days you’ll have gold hanging from you, too!”

  Me and Darnell and the Sarge had just finished one of our old family traditions: we’d gone to the Food Club and done the month’s shopping for the homes. Darnell parked the Happy Neighbor Group Home van at the front door and I got out and began unloading groceries. The Sarge got out of the van, looked through the window into the dayroom and was just this far from actually laughing.

  She said to Darnell, “Have you ever seen those magazines where they show you a picture and you have to supply a funny caption explaining what it’s all about?”

  I knew whatever this was about it wasn’t going to be funny to me. I’d read somewhere that there’s always a whiff of tragedy in humor, and the couple of times I’d heard the Sarge try to crack a joke the humor didn’t have whiffs of tragedy, it stank of tragedy. Darnell said, “Yeah.”

  She said, “For this picture”—she pointed through the window into the dayroom—“I’d have these two television executives looking through a two-way mirror and one says to the other, ‘From our initial test audiences it looks like this new program might have some serious quality problems!’”

  Darnell looked in the window and broke out laughing. It seemed like a real laugh too, not the usual behind-kissing one he had for everything the Sarge said.

  She said to me, “Unless I’m mistaken, I think you’re needed.”

  I didn’t even bother looking, I just lugged the crates of macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles into the kitchen. As soon as I set the first one down Mr. Foster came up to me and said, “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Luther, but he did it again.”

  Aw, no! This can’t be happening!

  When I got near the dayroom my nose told me what he was talking about.

  Mr. Baker had fired another shot in this war me and him had been having. We’d been beefing ‘cause about a year ago M
r. DuBois, the Sarge’s quack lawyer, had convinced her to follow state law and make everybody in her homes stop smoking. Most of the clients were OK with it after a while, but Mr. Baker let everyone know he’d been smoking since he was in his momma’s womb so he wasn’t about to stop for some stupid state law. Plus, there was the little thing of the people at the rehab center and Darnell Dixon and the Sarge giving him cigarettes every once in a while, just enough to keep his tobacco jones alive.

  His way of getting revenge for not being able to smoke 24/7 was to mess his pants up ‘cause he knew I was going to be the one who had to clean him. Since it was me who had to enforce the new no smoking rule, he figured who better to hit back at?

  I’m not going to lie, at first I did feel a little sympathetic for what he was going through, I mean the poor man had been a nicotine addict most of his life and then the Sarge cut out ninety-nine percent of his smokes. That didn’t seem fair, but it didn’t seem fair that he’d try to get at me for what she’d done to him, so my sympathy had worn out a long time ago.

  I’d even sneaked some money out of the petty cash and paid Dr. Mark to write him a script for some Stop-Smoke gum, but right after I got the script filled I came home from school and Mr. Baker was bouncing off the walls. He had a coconut-sized wad in his mouth and had chewed all twenty pieces of the gum at one time.

  When nothing seemed to work and he kept dropping these loads in his pants for me, I’d told the Sarge she should toss Mr. Baker out and find him another placement, but she threw another Sargeism at me.

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh?” she’d asked. “Or have you even bothered to think what his life would be like if he had to leave here? The time that he’s been under your wing is the first time in thirty-five years of institutional care that he hasn’t had to be in restraints most of the day. Give him a break, the man likes you, go look at his records, he’s done a lot worse.”

  The real reason she wouldn’t get rid of him was that she could use him as what DuBois called plausible deniability for the suspicious fires that happened to pop up in any of the rental houses that she wanted to get rid of.