The Unusual Mind of Vincent Shadow

by Tim Kehoe

  “Mike, Gary, John, let’s go. Find a seat.”

  “What are we doin’ today, Mr. D? Painting our faces? Acting out art? Throwing things off the roof again?” Gary asked.

  “Ooh! Ooh! Can I throw Gary off the roof, Mr. Dennis?” Lori asked.

  “No. No. No. We aren’t throwing anything off the roof. The folks in the office weren’t too happy about that. They failed to see the art. But not to worry, today is far more exciting. Quick, quick, take a seat,” Mr. Dennis said, jumping up and down on his desk.

  “Good. First, the homework,” Mr. Dennis said. “Did everyone bring their sculptures? Good. Good. Please stand up, class, and bring them forward.”

  There were eight kids left in Mr. Dennis’s Art Ideas class. They had started with thirty-two, but most of the kids had switched classes. Not everyone understood Mr. Dennis the way Vincent did.

  Vincent pulled out his sculpture. He had worked hard on it for several weeks. Harder than he had ever worked on a school project. It was a field of strange-looking snowdrifts made out of glass. It reminded Vincent of one of his mother’s favorite prints at the Met, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Vincent stood at the end of the line, holding his sculpture. And, as usual, Eleanor was at the front of the line.

  “Excellent, Eleanor. Please place it in the bin,” Mr. Dennis said as he pointed to a large garbage can in front of his desk.

  “In here?” Eleanor asked as she pointed at the garbage can.

  “Yes. Next, please. Oh my, Ariel. That is beautiful. Did you oxidize the copper yourself?”

  “Yeah, it took six days of heating it in the oven and basting it with water every twenty minutes,” Ariel said.

  “Wonderful, simply wonderful. Please carefully place it in the bin. Next. Very nice, Mike. Please place your art in the bin. Oh wow, Lori. Did you hand-paint all those beads? Wonderful. Please place it in the bin. Careful now,” Mr. Dennis said as Lori carefully set her sculpture on top of Mike’s in the garbage can.

  “Well done, Chris. Please place it in the bin. Brilliant, Gary! Just brilliant. What is it?” Mr. Dennis asked.

  “It’s like, ah, like a bunch of basketball dudes doing kind of, like, a ballet thing,” Gary said.

  “In the bin, please,” Mr. Dennis said to Gary.

  “Oh, John. Well done, you! Is that Paul Klee’s Sunset recreated in metal mesh? Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. In the bin, please. Carefully, John.”

  “Well, well, well, Mr. Shadow. You have outdone yourself this time. Fantastic. Just fantastic. Is that glass?” Mr. Dennis asked.

  “Yes. Hand-painted,” Vincent answered.

  “Oh, oh, no. Well, in the bin. Careful now, Mr. Shadow.”

  Vincent carefully balanced his glass sculpture on top of the pile of sculptures. He turned to walk back to his desk, but before he could reach it he heard Mr. Dennis yell—

  “FOOBEEZOOBEE!”

  Vincent turned to see Mr. Dennis standing waist-deep in the garbage can of broken art. The class was speechless. Ariel and Chris burst into tears.

  Mr. Dennis crawled out of the garbage can. He pulled two large pieces of broken glass from his leg. He was bleeding.

  “Didn’t you like the sculptures, Mr. D?” Gary asked.

  “They were wonderful. Simply wonderful,” Mr. Dennis said.

  Trying to fight back his tears, Chris said, “It took me a whole week to finish that. Why did you break it?”

  “It wasn’t finished, Chris. Art is never finished. It is a process. A journey. Your sculpture was beautiful, but it wasn’t finished. It can’t be finished. Class, class, please listen carefully. I gave each of you the exact same assignment, and you each came back with very different solutions. Right? And they were all great. They were all perfect.”

  “Then why did you break them, Mr. D?” Gary asked.

  “I wanted to teach you a lesson. An important, albeit hard, lesson.”

  “What lesson is that?” Chris asked. He was clearly getting more upset by the second.

  “There is always more than one right answer,” Vincent chimed in.

  “Right. Right, Mr. Shadow. Exactly right. There are lots of right answers. And lots of wrong answers. But it is important—it is imperative that when the muse touches you and you feel you have found the answer, you mustn’t fall in love with it.

  “There are lots of right answers. And if you fall in love with the one you have, you will close your eyes to all the other possible answers. These sculptures were absolutely wonderful. Perfect. Brilliant. All of them. Now, we will do the same assignment again and I want each and every one of you to come back tomorrow with another right answer.”

  THE CONTEST

  17

  Vincent stayed up most of the night bending, twisting, and turning a stack of wire clothes hangers into his new sculpture. He was tired and his fingers hurt, but he liked the sculpture. He set it on the kitchen counter and grabbed a bowl from the cupboard.

  “What’s up with the wiry thing?” Anna asked.

  “It’s homework,” Vincent said as he poured himself a bowl of Cookie Crisp cereal.

  “What’s it supposed to be?”

  “Art,” Vincent said.

  “It’s kind of ugly for art,” Anna said as she chomped on her cereal.

  “Is that for Mr. Dennis’s class?” Vibs asked.

  “Yep,” Vincent said.

  “I thought your sculpture was due yesterday,” Vibs said. “What happened to that glass thing?”

  “It broke,” Vincent said without looking up from his bowl. He knew it was pointless to try and explain Mr. Dennis to Vibs. He finished his cereal and walked to school with Stella. The house his parents had rented was in the heart of Minneapolis, one block from their new school.

  Mr. Dennis was a blur as he flew into the room on a brand new cherry-red Whizzer Board 4000. He kicked the jump pedal and soared high into the air, clearing his desk by seven or eight inches. He landed on his feet and stomped one foot down onto the rear flip bar; the board flipped through the air and he caught it with one hand. The class erupted in applause that could be heard all the way down to Mrs. Schmidt’s office.

  “Thank you, thank you. It was nothing, really. Just a little good, old-fashioned footwork.”

  “That’s the Whizzer Board 4000!” Gary yelled. “Where did you get it?”

  “Why, yes, Gary, this is indeed the Whizzer Board 4000. The radical new board from Whizzer Toys. She is a lot to handle. Fast as a panther,” Mr. Dennis said. “Do you like it?”

  “Yeah, but they’re impossible to get. Where did you get it, Mr. D?”

  “My cousin sent it to me,” Mr. Dennis said as he handed the Whizzer Board 4000 to Gary.

  “Who’s your cousin?” Vincent asked.

  “Well, I’m glad you asked. But first, where is Chris? He missed my big entrance. Should I do it again when he gets here?”

  “No need, Mr. D. Chris switched classes,” Gary said as he stroked the skateboard.

  “Ah, and then there were seven. Shame, shame, what a shame. Well then, Mr. Shadow, the answer to your question is Howie,” Mr. Dennis said as he started to write on the whiteboard.

  “Oh?” Vincent had no idea what Mr. Dennis was talking about, but then he rarely knew exactly what Mr. Dennis was talking about.

  “Oh, you kids probably know him better as Howard G. Whiz, the master toymaker.”

  “HOWARD G. WHIZ IS YOUR COUSIN?” Vincent shouted.

  “Yes,” Mr. Dennis said as he finished writing the words “Annual Whizzer Toy Contest” on the board.

  “Do you know him?” Lori asked.

  “Do you know your cousins?” Mr. Dennis asked her.

  “Yeah. Well, not the ones that live out in Washington. But I know my other cousins,” Lori said.

  “Right, right. Well I do know Howie, I mean Howard, and every year he has a toy contest. And every year I have my students enter the contest,” Mr. Dennis said.

  “Do the kids ever win?” Gary asked.

 
“No. No. I’ve never had a student win, but I’ve never had a class this large before. So, maybe this is the year. Maybe, just maybe. But dear, Gary, it isn’t really about winning and it really isn’t about the toys, the inventions, or the trip to New York. It’s—”

  “Trip to New York, Mr. D?” Gary interrupted.

  “Yes, yes, didn’t I mention that? Students from all over the world enter the contest. Howie looks through all the invention ideas and selects a handful of kids to build their inventions and bring them to the big Toy Fair in New York. There the kids get a chance to demonstrate their inventions on stage, and the winner is selected.”

  “What does the winner get?” Gary asked.

  “A million dollars?” John shouted.

  Mr. Dennis grabbed the Whizzer Board 4000 from Gary’s hands and held it above his head. He pushed down on the turbo pedal and the board let out a hefty grunt as the wheels spun furiously. “This, my friends, was invented by a kid just like you, sitting in a classroom just like this. The winner gets to spend the summer at Whizzer Toys inventing toys with my cousin Mr. Howard G. Whiz.”

  IDEA NO. 50

  18

  Vincent lay in bed with a pillow over his head. Gwen was doing a late night load of laundry and Vincent knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep until the spin cycle was complete.

  He was devastated. He had spent his entire life trying to be a toy inventor. Now he had a chance to get his inventions in front of one of his favorite inventors and he had no ideas. He had no idea where his ideas even came from, but he wished one would come to him now. He also wished he hadn’t left his notebooks sealed away in his lab.

  Vincent remembered reading all about Mr. Whiz buying the Tesla artifacts. Clearly, anyone willing to pay ten million dollars for the Tesla inventions had to be a big Tesla fan. Maybe if Vincent invented a Tesla-like toy it would get Mr. Whiz’s attention. Tesla had invented the world’s first remote-controlled toy. Maybe Vincent could create a new type of remote-controlled toy.

  Vincent sat up and stared at the poster of Nikola Tesla hanging on his bedroom wall. Tesla was standing in a large room with a huge two-story Tesla coil that was throwing bolts of lightning all around the room. Tesla was surrounded by the lightning. Vincent could see from Tesla’s hair that the electric discharge from the large coil was creating a lot of wind. Vincent thought about the wind he felt when Stella had cranked the Tesla device in the basement of the Met. If that small device had given off that much wind, Vincent imagined that standing next to the large coil in the picture must have been like standing in a wind tunnel. Tesla could have flown a kite in the room. An indoor kite.

  “Yeah, an indoor kite,” Vincent said out loud.

  That was it! Vincent had his toy idea. A windless, indoor kite. It was Idea No. 50 and he had come up with the idea by himself. No flashes of light. No darkness. But unfortunately, unlike his other ideas, this one had not come to him whole and complete. He would now need to figure out how it would work and how he would build it.

  Vincent stayed up late researching Tesla coils and corona wind and sketching his ideas. The entire kite would act like a giant Tesla coil. He would build a small handheld device that would produce high voltage. He would run the high voltage up a wire toward the kite. The wire would become very thin and stop just before reaching the kite. The electricity would charge the air around the tip of the wire and build until it had enough power to jump from the wire to the kite, just like the sparks from the Tesla coil in the picture.

  With a little luck and a lot of science, the resulting wind would send the kite soaring into the air.

  SUGAR AND SPICE, YEAH RIGHT

  19

  Vincent submitted his windless kite idea and Mr. Dennis loved it. So Vincent went to work collecting the parts he would need for a prototype just in case he was selected to go to the Toy Fair.

  He needed a wire no thicker than a human hair and he knew just where to find it. But first he would have to get past Anna.

  Vincent got down on his knees and peeked around the corner. Anna was watching TV in the living room. He crawled on his belly behind the couch, but he needed to get to the stairs and there was a five-foot gap between the end of the couch and the stairway. Anna would see him if she turned around. They both knew he had no business upstairs. His “bedroom” was in the basement. In the laundry room.

  Vincent moved slowly. He held his breath as he inched along. He made it to the stairs without Anna noticing him. She was engrossed in some annoying little six-year-old-girl show.

  Vincent slid the guitar case out from under his dad’s bed. He needed a thin wire for his invention and the top E string on his dad’s electric guitar fit the bill perfectly. Vincent removed the wire, put it in his pocket, and slid the guitar back under the bed.

  “What are you doing?” Anna asked.

  “Nothing. I dropped something and was just looking for it.”

  “You shouldn’t be in my mom’s room. I know you’re up to something, Vincent. And I’m going to tell my mom when she gets home.”

  Vincent put his hand in his pocket to protect the guitar string.

  “Why don’t you tell her how annoying you are?” Vincent walked downstairs to his room.

  Anna followed.

  “Go away, Anna. Leave me alone.”

  Anna hopped on top of the dryer and just stared at him. He hated having a little sister.

  Vincent’s kite started to take shape over the next few weeks. He found a diamond-shaped canvas at school and decided to use it as the frame for his kite. He removed the canvas and replaced it with aluminum foil. The shiny metal kite looked like a toy from the future, even if it didn’t fly yet.

  Vincent borrowed speaker wire from the Shadow family stereo. He tied a three-foot piece of string to the end of the speaker wire and tied the other end of the string to the kite. He wrapped the electric guitar string around the kite string and attached one end to the speaker wire.

  He would send high voltage up the speaker wire to the electric guitar string. When enough electricity built up in the guitar string, it would leap the six-inch gap to the metal kite. The leaping ions would cause an ionic breeze, and the kite would soar into the air. Now all Vincent needed was a way to produce the required high voltage.

  HIGH VOLTAGE

  20

  Vincent looked into the brown paper bag.Great, he thought, a tuna sandwich again. He hated tuna sandwiches. Particularly the crispy brown tuna sandwiches Vibs put in his lunch every day.

  He dumped his lunch onto the cafeteria table. One soft brown banana, a baggie full of corn nuts, and one brown tuna sandwich. Great. Just great.

  Vincent looked over at Stella’s lunch. One Thermos of piping hot chicken noodle soup. Four saltine crackers. A shiny red apple. One king-size bag of nacho-flavored Doritos. A homemade double-fudge brownie that had been wrapped tightly in tin foil and two scoops of Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream packed in a second Thermos to go with the brownie.

  “Your mom hates me,” Vincent said.

  “Do you want my soup?” Stella asked.

  “I’ll take the brownie.”

  Stella slid the brownie and ice cream across the table. It was so warm that some of the fudge chunks had melted and formed a pool of molten chocolaty goodness on the tinfoil. Vincent was trying to figure out the best way to eat it when he heard a commotion out in the hall.

  “Vincent! Vincent! Vincent Shadow!”

  Now the students at MSAD had come to expect the unexpected from Mr. Dennis, and it wasn’t unusual for Mr. Dennis to get so excited that he would shake uncontrollably or be unable to catch his breath. But today, Mr. Dennis had taken his excitability to a whole new level.

  “Vincent! Has anyone seen Vincent Shadow?”

  “IN HERE, MR. D!” Vincent shouted.

  Paul Bard dove out of the way, narrowly avoiding a high-speed crash as Mr. Dennis came flying into the lunchroom on his Whizzer Board 4000.

  “Vincent! Vincent! Vincent Shadow!” Mr. Den
nis yelled.

  Vincent stood up, waved his hands in the air and yelled, “OVER HERE, MR. D!”

  Now, the Whizzer Board 4000 was a fine machine, representing the latest technology in electric in-line skateboards, but Howard G. Whiz did not have his 220-pound cousin in mind when he designed the brakes for it. But Mr. Dennis did have his cousin in mind as he crashed and slid down twelve feet of table, coming to a stop right atop Vincent’s hot fudge brownie. (Unfortunately for Vincent, his crispy brown tuna sandwich was unharmed in the accident.)

  “Are you okay, Mr. D?” Vincent asked as a crowd gathered around.

  “I’m great, Vincent! Just great. You did it! By golly, you did it!” Mr. Dennis said as he climbed off the table, licking the hot fudge from his face.

  “Did what Mr. D?” Vincent asked.

  “You did it, Vincent! You did it! You have been selected to demonstrate your windless kite in New York City!”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, Vincent. Really!” Mr. Dennis reached into his pocket and pulled out fragments of Wonder Bread and part of a Fruit Roll-Up he had collected while sliding down the cafeteria table. He reached back into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

  “Here it is, Vincent. You’ve been invited to demonstrate your windless kite at the Toy Fair next week in New York City. ‘One lucky inventor will be selected to work at the Whizzer Toy Company this summer,’” he read, “‘turning his or her toy invention into a real Whizzer Toy product.’ You’re going to New York, Mr. Shadow,” Mr. Dennis said as he started to jump up and down. “You’re going to New York!”

  “What’s wrong, Vincent?” Stella asked. “You don’t look excited.”

  “It’s the kite. I don’t have it working yet.”

  “I’ll help you, Vincent. Don’t worry, we’ll get it done in time,” Stella said.