“It is one of those things that a lifetime of reading Dickens and Trollope would annotate. But given the literary limitations of an American curriculum, we should be heartened that experience and the wisdom that comes from it—as well as an adherence to decorum—are good tutors.”
I looked at the Butler. “That still sounds like you’re trying to convert me into a gentleman.”
“Thank you,” said the Butler.
And that’s how I went to school that day: wondering what was so good about stupid adherence to stupid decorum.
* * *
By the way, I’d stopped watching for an email from my father. I guess I knew it wasn’t coming.
Probably he didn’t know what stupid decorum was either.
· 17 ·
Leg Before WIcket
If a batsman prevents a bowled ball from striking the wicket by placing his leg or body in its path to block it, the umpire may dismiss the batsman for being leg before wicket.
Here’s what happened after I finished my oral report on the Declaration of Independence and the American Rebellion.
Mr. Solaski gave a long, low whistle. “Well,” he said, “it’s usually valuable to hear alternate viewpoints.”
Patty Trowbridge raised her hand and asked what the patriots used to do to Tory traitors.
Ryan Moore turned to me. “They tarred and feathered them,” he said.
Actually, he didn’t say, “They tarred and feathered them.” He snarled it.
Billy Colt looked at me and shook his head. “Nice knowing you,” he whispered.
It was a long class.
When Patty Trowbridge began her report on Betsy Ross, she said that her ancestors had fought and died for our freedom at Bunker Hill—“unlike some.”
When Jennifer Washburn began her report on the battle at the Old North Bridge, she said she had a relative who’d helped to smuggle Abraham Lincoln into Washington for his inauguration—“unlike some.”
And when Ryan Moore began his report on the Boston Massacre, he said he was glad true Americans like Crispus Attucks had stood up—“unlike some.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said to Billy Colt at noon in the cafeteria. He was opening my lunch to see what the Butler had packed. “I mean, it all happened a bazillion years ago.”
“Do you want these raisin scones?” he said.
“And they’re all dead.”
“Or maybe they’re blueberry.”
Ryan Moore stopped at our table.
I looked at him.
“Tory traitor,” he said. He took the two scones and walked away.
Billy Colt took out the hard-boiled eggs.
“So can I have these?” he said.
* * *
The Butler picked us up in the Eggplant. Annie and Charlie and Emily talked fast, like they had eaten too much sugar. Annie said she scored three goals during football tryouts and it would have been four if she hadn’t been fouled at the last minute, and she got a 99 percent on her spelling and it would have been 100 percent except she forgot a period on one of her sentences, and Coach Krosoczka said during football tryouts that she had a very natural throw-in. Charlie got to read the Pledge of Allegiance over the PA during morning announcements and Principal Swieteck said she had done so well that she could lead the school in the Pledge of Allegiance the whole week, and everyone loved her report on E. Nesbit except the boys but who cared what they thought? And Emily said the Marysville Fire Station was wonderful and they had blown the sirens and everything, and she’d asked if she could slide down the pole but they said they only let firefighters do that and maybe someday she’d be a firefighter and she could slide down the pole all she wanted. And then later back at school everyone had gotten a new set of crayons and it wasn’t the usual sixteen pack, it was a sixty-four pack, and it had gold and silver and bronze and everything.
“And how was your day, young Master Carter?” said the Butler.
“Great,” I said.
“Your inflection suggests otherwise,” he said.
“Well, since I got called a Tory traitor, maybe it wasn’t so great.”
The Butler looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“And of course you pointed out to your misinformed peers that it would be impossible for an American to be a member of a British political party.”
“Yup. That’s exactly what I told them.”
A whole minute went by.
“And aquamarine,” said Emily.
“You understand, young Master Carter, that disagreement need not be unpleasant,” said the Butler.
“It is in sixth grade.”
“The patterns you set in—”
“Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick, I really don’t need to hear this right now.”
We drove the rest of the way home without talking, except for Charlie, who said, “Why is everyone mad?” It was misting out, and the wipers went back and forth.
“Angry,” said the Butler. “‘Mad’ refers to the ailment rather than the emotion.”
“Oh,” said Charlie.
“And cherry red,” said Emily.
I didn’t say anything.
I was mad.
* * *
On that morning in the Blue Mountains of Australia when I woke up before my father, I really wanted to get the fire started so I could cook breakfast. It wasn’t raining, exactly, but everything was sopping wet—not just on the ground, but up through the whole forest. The trees were black with the damp, and the ground soft enough that if you pressed your sneaker into it, water came up. Dripping from every branch. Beads of water dripping off our tent. The sound of dripping almost as loud as the white stream that was running high—or maybe it was always that high—down a bank by where we were camped. If I had wanted to wake my father up, I would have had to shout over all the dripping and streaming and squishing and gurgling.
The wood we had stacked the night before was sopping, like it needed to be wrung out. I poked around in the ashes from last night’s campfire, but all that was left were two pathetic embers winking in and out in all that dampness. They didn’t have much longer to live, and laying sopping wood on them wasn’t going to save them. So I left the campsite and went into the high grass to snap some small dead branches off the trees, since maybe they wouldn’t be as wet as everything else. And they weren’t. I got a couple of handfuls, and then a few more, and then I took off my T-shirt and loaded them all into it, since my shirt was already sopping wet from the water coming off the branches and it wasn’t doing me much good anyway. On the way back, every big leaf—and there were plenty of them—angled itself to dump cold water down my back and into my jeans and down to my sneakers.
I brought the branches that were at least drier back to camp. One of the embers hadn’t made it, but the other was still fighting. I picked out the thinnest and driest branches and laid them crosswise over the fighting ember, and I began to blow as gently as I could. The ember began to flare a bright yellow, and a few quick sparks shot into the branches.
I thought there might even have been a little smoke coming up.
I blew gently again.
The ember sputtered.
I blew some more.
A flame steadied into a pale yellow.
More blowing.
A snap, then another, and two of the twigs showed flame. Then more quick snaps, some sparks, and two more twigs burning.
That’s when I noticed my father was standing there. Completely dry. As if a drip wouldn’t dare come near him.
“We’re not going to be able to do much with that,” he said.
He knelt down beside me and swiped all the twigs away. Then he started to build the fire all over again.
We didn’t talk. I mostly listened to the screeching birds overhead, and the water everywhere, and the wind in the high eucalyptus branches.
* * *
The night after my report on the Declaration of Independence, my mother was over at St. Michael’s again.
“Father Jarrett has asked her to attend to certain budget matters for the next calendar year,” said the Butler.
“That doesn’t start for almost three months,” I said.
“Then there is no time to lose. Is there anything I might do to help with homework?”
“I only have social studies,” I said.
“Then perhaps . . .”
“You helped me enough in social studies.”
“Young Master Carter, I suggested new ideas for you to consider—and clearly, they were new ideas for much of your class to consider as well.”
“It’s not like they really considered them,” I said.
“And so you face a curious dilemma, one you will face often if you choose to live a life of integrity and challenge. Is it better to consider all ideas, to determine which one seems to you most reasonable and worthy, and then to speak your mind? Or is it better to follow old patterns and to acquiesce quietly into a general conformity?”
“What does ‘acquiesce quietly into a general conformity’ even mean?”
“I believe you know,” said the Butler.
I looked at him. “I think that’s the one I want.”
“No, it is not,” said the Butler. “That is the one that someone stuck in middle school would choose.”
“I am stuck in middle school.”
“You are attending middle school, young Master Carter. You need not be stuck there.”
“That feels like a googly,” I said.
“Not at all. These are straight bowls. All you have to do is to swing your bat.”
“My father isn’t coming home.”
I don’t know why I said that to the Butler. It just came out. I don’t know why it just came out. But it did.
I really don’t know why I said that.
The Butler looked at me, then looked away, then looked back at me. “Young Master Carter,” he said. Almost whispered. He tried again. “Young Master Carter, I—”
“He’s not coming home. He wants to live in Germany.”
A long time went by.
“Maybe it’s because of us.”
Another long time.
“Not exactly a straight bowl,” I said.
“No,” said the Butler. “Not a straight bowl at all.”
“So how do I sort that out?”
“By making good decisions and remembering who you are.”
“Like keeping the bails up?”
“Exactly like. None of this is your doing, young Master Carter.”
Another long time. There were a lot of long times.
“How can I be sure?” I said.
“Because, Carter,” said the Butler, “I am telling you it is so. And I have something for you.”
He went downstairs, came back, and handed me a book: The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“I saw the movies,” I said.
“Which means that you have yet to learn anything at all about Sir Arthur’s conception of the great detective. I suggest beginning with ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band.’ Please note its insistence that experience and wisdom and adherence to decorum will have their way.”
“I don’t know what that means either.”
“I think you do,” said the Butler. “As a matter of fact, I wonder if you know it better than you imagine.”
I looked at the Butler, and I began to hope that maybe Krebs and the Butler were right. Maybe some things could get sorted.
But I still didn’t know how.
· 18 ·
RunnIng Between the Wickets
Runs are scored as the batsmen sprint from their wickets, carrying their bats and placing them or some part of the body into the crease in front of the opposite wicket. In this manner, the batsman facing the bowler will continue to bat and accumulate runs until he is dismissed.
For the next three days in school, I tried to keep the bails up.
It’s not easy being a Tory—which everyone should know is impossible for an American to be. But apparently the news hadn’t reached the sixth grade of Longfellow Middle School.
I mean, how would you like it if when you stood up to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, Patty Trowbridge asked Mrs. Harknet if someone who didn’t believe in the Declaration of Independence should be allowed to stand up and pledge allegiance?
How would you like it?
So you know what? It was kind of sweet to be up in front of Emily’s class and listen to her introduce me as “My Favorite Person of the Week,” and then have a bunch of second graders ask how old I was, what TV show did I like—I told them I liked Ace Robotroid and the Robotroid Rangers because . . . just because—what did I want to be when I grew up, did I ever meet anyone famous, did I know that Sarah Bixby thought I was cute—which sort of ended the questions because Sarah Bixby turned red and ran out of the room and Emily’s teacher had to go after her.
It was kind of nice to be Emily’s Favorite Person of the Week.
I never would have thought so, but it really was.
* * *
It was already mid-October, and the trees had shaken down most of their leaves, and there weren’t going to be too many more cricket practices. The Butler said we should try to get in at least one match, even though we didn’t have enough for two full teams, so it wouldn’t exactly be an authentic match. He scheduled it for the last Saturday in October, early in the morning since the Longfellow Middle School Minutemen were playing their football game at ten o’clock.
Krebs would be the captain of Team India. Singh would be captain of Team Britannia. And even though the Butler kept saying, “All good fun, boys,” Krebs had never lost anything in his life, and Singh said Team Britannia would teach him the agony of defeat, and Krebs started to walk around the school with Sachin Tendulkar’s bat, and Singh’s mother handed out Team Britannia sweatshirts with British flags on the back and lions rampant on the front. I mean, really. Lions rampant?
And just for the record, no one in the whole sixth grade called Singh or anyone on Team Britannia a Tory—maybe because it’s smart for a sixth grader not to call an eighth grader anything but an eighth grader.
The day Team Britannia wore their sweatshirts to school, Krebs told everyone on Team India to give him their Longfellow Middle School hoodies the next morning. We all did. The day after that, he gave them back to us, and printed across the backs were names like these:
Sachin Tendulkar
Sunil Gavaskar
Kapil Dev
Anil Kumble
Virender Sehwag
Krebs was Sachun Tendulkar. I was Virender Sehwag.
“Who’s Virender Sehwag?” I said.
Krebs looked at me like I was a stupid sixth grader. “The year 2004? India versus Pakistan? The first player from India to score over three hundred? Anil Kumble at spinner?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I remember. The year 2004. I think I was almost conceived by then.”
Krebs laughed. “Okay. I guess it’s different if you’ve lived in New Delhi.”
“Maybe a little bit.”
“But at least I didn’t announce to everyone that I was against the American Revolution.”
“I’m not against the American Revolution.”
“Benedict Arnold was a good guy?”
There was no use explaining. So I put on my hoodie and the rest of Team India put on theirs and we went out to practice our batting. And even though Sachin Tendulkar hit something like thirty-five runs, Virender Sehwag didn’t do so bad that afternoon either.
He kept the bails up.
* * *
When I got home, I walked Ned around the block with my mother, who had never before walked Ned around the block. Never once. The Ketchums’ azaleas had lost all their flowers. The Briggses’ rhododendrons were putting on their darker green for winter. The Rockcastles’ holly hedge was filled with red berries. And the Koertges’ petunias were all dead. My mother bent down to touch the last brown leaves.
“Do
you remember in 2004 when Virender Sehwag scored over three hundred runs in one test match?” I said.
My mother looked at me like I was speaking in hieroglyphics. “Should I remember that?”
“He was the first Indian player to do it. Score three hundred runs. In one test match.”
We kept walking until Ned stopped by Billy Colt’s driveway.
“I’m sure Mr. Sehwag must have been very happy.”
“India beat Pakistan, so I guess his whole team was happy.”
“Good for them,” said my mother.
I don’t think she really cared.
“Carter,” she said.
Ned finished up. I saw Billy Colt looking out his window, and I waved. He was on Team Britannia, so I was glad Ned did what he did where he did it, which he would have done even if Billy Colt was on Team India, but somehow now it felt right.
“Carter,” said my mother, “how are you feeling about . . .”
Ned pulled on his lead. He was ready to move on.
“About . . .”
“Okay,” I said.
We got to the day lilies on the other side of the driveway. Ned took care of them. For a little dachshund, it was really amazing how many day lilies he could take care of.
“Okay,” my mother said.
“Are you glad the Butler’s here?” I asked.
She nodded. “Paul came at the right time, didn’t he?”
She called him Paul. Really. Paul.
“We could have used him during the other deployments,” she said.
I nodded.
“It was like he knew when we needed him most,” she said.
I looked at her.
“When we needed him most,” I said.
She nodded. “Does Ned always do that to the day lilies?”
I had just figured something out.
* * *
That night, after supper, I dried dishes for the Butler. It was the only time he ever had his jacket off—except for cricket. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up, his cuff links on the windowsill. His vest was still buttoned tightly, and his tie was, as usual, perfect.
Pay Attention, Carter Jones Page 9