Pay Attention, Carter Jones

by Gary D. Schmidt

  * * *

  The Butler was gone for almost a month. I mean, a couple of fortnights.

  The note he left said he had an important decision to make—“the making of which requires consultation.”

  You know how he talks. And writes, I guess.

  He didn’t tell us when he was coming back. Or why he was being such a pain in the glutes with his “consultation.”

  Or if he was coming back.

  Like . . . never mind.

  So, my mother took over like a premier bowler. She made a roster, and when she bowled, we paid attention.

  We took turns cooking. My sisters and I one night, my mother the next. I mostly walked Ned, but sometimes Annie did—​depending on her robotics club and piano practice. The Marysville Public Library had an exhibit of Rembrandt etchings, and I took Annie in the Eggplant. She liked Rembrandt better than Turner. Emily and Charlie started ballet lessons with Madame Richelieu—​my mother took them there in the Bentley. And she picked me up late at school when Krebs and I began running together—​along with his father, who said he needed to get in shape again. Mr. Krebs told me I had the makings of a miler. Krebs thought so too. “Better pay attention to that, too,” he said.

  Late at night, after Emily and Charlie had gone to bed and our homework was done, Annie and I sat with my mother and we held Ba-Bear and talked about Currier—​and we didn’t cry all the time.

  Then one Saturday afternoon, one of those surprising late November days when it seems as if fall is trying to hold on and the light is a dark yellow, the doorbell rang, and the Butler was standing on our front stoop. My mother and sisters had walked to the library to check out the last E. Nesbit book that Emily and Charlie hadn’t read, but I was home with Ned, who got so excited he did what he usually does.

  “Where have you been?” I said.

  “You and Carson Krebs were splendid together,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Few cricketers learn so quickly the importance of depending upon one another. Even fewer discover the pleasures of such dependency. And fewer still learn that such is the very stuff of what makes us most human. You have made good decisions, young Master Carter, and remembered who you are.”

  “A gentleman?”

  “Indeed. Are the bats and balls still in the Bentley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you care to drive?”

  I drove to Longfellow Middle School and parked, and the Butler opened the trunk of the Eggplant, and together we pulled out everything we needed. We set up a net and pounded in the stumps and placed the bails.

  “Defend your wicket to the death, young Master Carter.”

  “So where were you?”

  The Butler paused, the cricket ball in his hand.

  “It’s a straight question,” I said.

  The Butler tossed the cricket ball up and down. “Bamberg,” he said.

  “Bamberg? That sounds like something in a cartoon.”

  “Bamberg is where your father is stationed, young Master Carter.”

  A long pause—​but no high screeches.

  “You went to see my father?”

  “You see what reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will do for your powers of deduction.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I defined for him the qualities of—​how shall I say it?—​ungentlemanly behavior, in which others are expected to yield to and suffer from the whims of the male line. Then I told him about his son, and his behavior to his sisters, and his support of his mother, and his nobility in the noblest game of all. And I told him that I would be returning to Marysville to witness a rebirth of gentlemanly virtue.”

  “He’s been a jerk to us.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, really a jerk.”

  The Butler nodded.

  “Anywhere else?”

  The Butler paused again.

  “And to London.”

  “Okay,” I said. “London’s cool.”

  “As you say,” said the Butler.

  I swung the bat a couple of times. “He might never come home, I guess.”

  “He might not,” said the Butler.

  “And then what do we do?”

  “The living of your life is hard work, young Master Carter. If that were to happen, you must actively choose what to do. You may act the gentleman or the barbarian.”

  “Those are the only two choices?”

  “Yes,” said the Butler, “the only two. And now, may I?” He held up a cricket ball and I swung my bat low, my arm straight.

  In Marysville, New York, in a cold November dusk, the air gets a darker and darker yellow. The dark green of the grass spreads out into shadows. The trees are dark but familiar, and the oaks shake their leaves to remind you that they’re holding on to them still, even if the wimpy maples have given up theirs. Above them, the sky is streaked with yellow, and red, and crisp gold, and above that, in the dark, the first stars peek, and everything is still and calm.

  Late that afternoon, I batted cricket balls high into the golden sky, one after another, just like Virender Sehwag would have.

  I might have scored a century.

  And afterward, the Butler drove home, and we did not talk, and we pulled into the driveway, and I got out of the Eggplant, and I said, “My father asked you to come to Bamberg, didn’t he?”

  The Butler looked at me. “He knew that your grandfather’s endowment allowed me to choose.”

  “So he asked you to stay with him.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And with Max and his mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you went to London.”

  “I did.”

  “How come?”

  “I went to London to settle my affairs there.”

  Suddenly there were three high squeals—​the kind that can make a planet stop spinning. The girls were home from the library, and they had seen the Butler in the driveway, and they were pounding toward us.

  But before they reached us, the Butler leaned down to me.

  “Young Master Carter,” he said, “you are my home.”

  That night, I cried and cried and cried. For Currier, for everything he would miss. And for my mother, for everything she had missed. And for my father, for everything he would miss.

  For me.

  Then I chose.

  The email I sent had wonderfully descriptive connotations—​even though I was saying goodbye.

  · 29 ·

  Toe End

  The very tip of the cricket bat, the toe end is made of untreated wood. Its owner should pay attention to its particular needs, as it may deteriorate from dampness.

  The butler says, “Make good decisions and remember who you are.”

  I am Carter Jonathan Jones. I live in Marysville, New York. I am the son of Carolyn Samantha Jones and Jackson Jonathan Jones. I will always be their son.

  I am the brother of Anne Elizabeth Jones, Emily Hope Jones, Currier Bronson Jones, and Charlotte Doyle Jones. I will always be their brother.

  Ned is our dachshund.

  Mr. August Paul Bowles-Fitzpatrick is our Butler. And more.

  I am halfway through sixth grade. I am hoping the second half will be easier than the first half.

  Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick says I am a gentleman. I am going to try to be.

  Right now, I am on a plane. Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick is in the seat next to me. He’s asleep, which isn’t surprising since we’ve been on this plane for seven hours and we have two more to go and there’s only so many movies you can watch in a row.

  When the Butler told us that my grandfather’s endowment allowed for substantial travel, he asked us where we would like to go for Christmas, and we told him.

  So we’re flying to Italy together.

  In my pocket is Currier’s green marble. It is always going to be in my pocket.

  In my backpack is Captain Jackson Jonathan Jones’s beret. The Butler gave it to me before we left. “You
will want to have this,” he said.

  I did.

  Across the aisle are my mother and Annie and Charlie and Emily. They’re asleep too. Annie is going to a robotics competition in Rome, and while there she wants to sit through a real Italian opera in a real Italian opera house. “That would be lovely,” the Butler told her. I put my finger up to my mouth and pretended to do what Ned does—​but I guess I’ll go anyway. Charlie wants to see a real Italian ballet. I’m hoping they don’t like ballet in Italy. And Emily wants to spend a day on a gondola in Venice and she wants to row by herself. That would be okay.

  My mother wants to see the Sistine Chapel. Father Jarrett got her special tickets, and when she picked them up at St. Michael’s they had a long talk. A really long talk. When it was done, my mother was the full-time administrator of St. Michael’s Church.

  Guess where we’ve been going for mass on Sundays again.

  The Butler comes too. He likes the architecture of the church. Its central nave, he said, is a credit to its American architect.

  And what do I want to do in Italy?

  First, I want pizza every night.

  You can imagine what the Butler said about that.

  But second, I want to climb high up into the mountains of northern Italy. The Butler is going to climb too, even though he’s sort of portly, as you might remember.

  It’s wintertime, so we won’t be able to go to the peaks. But we can climb up paths that lead higher and higher until the woods grow thinner and thinner around us, and then there will only be evergreens. The trees will hold up fat boughs of snow, and the air will get colder and colder, and quieter and quieter, and we’ll pass high icicles that drip from open rocks, and the snow will crunch beneath our boots, and the sunlight will glint off the snow and the ice, and it will be so bright that we’ll have to wear sunglasses in winter.

  High up in the mountains of northern Italy, the air will be blue—​maybe not blue like the eucalyptus forests of Australia, which I’ve seen before, so I know what that blue is like. But blue in a different way. In its own way.

  The Butler says there are lots of places where the air is blue in its own way.

  I’ve got my eye in now.

  I’m going to find them all.

  One

  “Before you agree to have Joseph come live with you,” Mrs. Stroud said, “there are one or two things you ought to understand.” She took out a State of Maine * Department of Health and Human Services folder and laid it on the kitchen table.

  My mother looked at me for a long time. Then she looked at my father.

  He put his hand on my back. “Jack should know what we’re getting into, same as us,” he said. He looked down at me. “Maybe you more than anyone.”

  My mother nodded, and Mrs. Stroud opened the folder.

  This is what she told us.

  Two months ago, when Joseph was at Adams Lake Juvenile, a kid gave him something bad in the boys’ bathroom. He went into a stall and swallowed it.

  After a long time, his teacher came looking for him.

  When she found him, he screamed.

  She said he’d better come out of that stall right now.

  He screamed again.

  She said he’d better come out of that stall right now unless he wanted more trouble.

  So he did.

  Then he tried to kill her.

  They sent Joseph to Stone Mountain, even though he did what he did because the kid gave him something bad and he swallowed it. But that didn’t matter. They sent him to Stone Mountain anyway.

  He won’t talk about what happened to him there. But since he left Stone Mountain, he won’t wear anything orange.

  He won’t let anyone stand behind him.

  He won’t let anyone touch him.

  He won’t go into rooms that are too small.

  And he won’t eat canned peaches.

  “He’s not very big on meatloaf either,” said Mrs. Stroud, and she closed the State of Maine * Department of Health and Human Services folder.

  “He’ll eat my mother’s canned peaches,” I said.

  Mrs. Stroud smiled. “We’ll see,” she said. Then she put her hand on mine. “Jack, your parents know this, and you should too. There’s something else about Joseph.”

  “What?” I said.

  “He has a daughter.”

  I felt my father’s hand against my back.

  “She’s almost three months old, but he’s never seen her. That’s one of the biggest heartbreaks in this case.” Mrs. Stroud handed the folder to my mother. “Mrs. Hurd, I’ll leave this with you. Read it, and then you can decide. Call me in a few days if . . .”

  “We’ve talked this over,” said my mother. “We already know.”

  “Are you sure?”

  My mother nodded.

  “We’re sure,” my father said.

  Mrs. Stroud looked at me. “How about you, Jack?”

  My father’s hand still against my back.

  “How soon can he come?” I said.

  * * *

  Two days later, on Friday, Mrs. Stroud brought Joseph home. He looked like a regular eighth-grade kid at Eastham Middle School. Black eyes, black hair almost over his eyes, a little less than middle for height, a little less than middle for weight, sort of middle for everything else.

  He really could have been any other eighth-grade kid at Eastham Middle School. Except he had a daughter. And he wouldn’t look at you when he talked—if he talked.

  He didn’t say a thing when he got out of Mrs. Stroud’s car. He wouldn’t let my mother hug him. He wouldn’t shake my father’s hand. And when I brought him up to our room, he threw his stuff on the top bunk and climbed up and still didn’t say anything.

  I got in the bunk below him and read some until my father called us for milking.

  In the Big Barn, Joseph and I tore up three bales and filled the bins—I told him you have to fill the bin in the Small Barn for Quintus Sertorius first because he’s an old horse and doesn’t like to wait—and then we went back to the cows in the tie-up to milk. My father said Joseph could watch but after today he’d be helping. Joseph stood with his back against the wall. When the cows turned and looked at him, they didn’t say a thing. Not even Dahlia. They kept pulling on the hay and chewing, like they do. That means they thought he was okay.

  When my father got to Rosie, he asked Joseph if he’d like to try milking her.

  Joseph shook his head.

  “She’s gentle. She’d let anyone milk her.”

  Joseph didn’t say anything.

  Still, after my father was done and he’d taken a couple of full buckets out to the cooler, Joseph went up behind Rosie and reached out and rubbed the end of her back, right above her tail. He didn’t know that Rosie loved anyone who rubbed her rump, so when she mooed and swayed her behind, Joseph took a couple of quick steps back.

  I said, “She’s just telling you she’s—”

  “I don’t care,” said Joseph, and he left the barn.

  The next morning, though, when the three of us went out to the Big Barn to milk, Joseph went to Rosie first, and he reached out and rubbed her rump again. And Rosie told Joseph she loved him.

  That was the first time I saw Joseph smile. Sort of.

  Joseph had never touched a cow’s rump before. Or her teat even. Really. So he was terrible at milking. And even though I kept rubbing her rump while Joseph was being terrible at milking, Rosie got pretty frustrated, and finally she kicked over the pail because Joseph didn’t have his leg out in front of hers. It didn’t matter much because there was hardly any milk in it anyway.

  Joseph stood up just when my father came in.

  My father looked at the pail and the spilled milk.

  Then at Joseph.

  “I think there’s something you need to finish there, Joseph,” he said.

  “You need milk this bad, there’s probably a store where you can get some like normal people,” he said.

  It was the longest stri
ng of words he’d said.

  “I don’t need the milk,” said my father. He pointed at Rosie. “But she needs you to milk her.”

  “She doesn’t need me to—”

  “She needs you.” My father stacked his two pails to the side, then righted Joseph’s pail underneath Rosie. “Sit down on the stool,” he said. It took a few seconds, but Joseph came and sat down, and my father knelt beside him and reached beneath Rosie. “I’ll show you again. With your thumb and forefinger, you pinch off the top—like this, and then let your fingers strip the milk down—like this.” A squirt of milk against the metal side. Another. Another. Then my father stood.

  A few seconds. More than a few.

  Then Joseph reached under and tried.

  Nothing.

  “Thumb and forefinger tight, then run down your other fingers.”

  Joseph tried again.

  My father took over rubbing Rosie’s rump.

  She mooed once, and then the squirting began. It was slow and not all that steady, but Joseph was milking, and soon the sound in the pail wasn’t the sound of milk on metal, but that foamy sound of milk in milk.

  My father looked at me and smiled. Then he went around behind Joseph to pick up the pails he’d stacked.

  And—bang!—Joseph leaped up as if something had exploded beneath him. His pail got knocked over again and the stool and Rosie mooed her afraid moo and Joseph stood with his back against the barn wall with his hands up, and even though he usually didn’t look at anyone he was looking at us and breathing fast and hard, like there wasn’t enough air in the whole wide world to breathe!

  My father looked at him, and I could see something in my father’s eyes I’d never seen before. Sadness, I guess. “I’m sorry, Joseph. I’ll try to remember,” he said. He bent down and picked up his pails. “I’ll finish here. You boys better go back to the house and get washed up. Jack, tell Mom I’ll be a few minutes.”

  It was almost dawn when we went outside, Joseph and me. The peaks to the west were lit up and spilling some of the light down their sides and onto our fields, all harvested and turned and ready for the long winter. You could smell the cold air and the wood smoke. The pond had broken panes of ice on the edges, enough to annoy the geese, and from the Small Barn you could hear Quintus Sertorius at his grain, snorting in his bin. Rosie mooed inside the barn. Everywhere in the gray yard, color was filling in—the red barns, the green shutters, the green trim on the house and the yellow trim on the chicken shed, the orange tabby clawing into the fence rail.