The Boy from Left Field

by Tom Henighan

  “You see, all the comforts of home,” Selim told them. “There’s some food in the fridge, too. Enjoy the shelter. But remember, please, only for one month.”

  Storm Cloud gazed around. Hawk was surprised. She seemed on the verge of tears. He couldn’t figure out why. This was much better than their taxi.

  Selim nodded as if pleased with his own arrangements, but when Storm Cloud said nothing, he patted Hawk on the shoulder and quietly slipped away.

  “It’s not so bad, Mum,” Hawk told her. “I like it here. It’s a good place to study. And nobody can throw rocks at us. We’re safe here, Mum. And don’t worry. We’ve got a whole month to find something. Maybe I’ll have that Babe Ruth baseball by then, and we can move into a hotel. Dad can find us one, I’ll bet.”

  His mother cleared her throat and made a disparaging sound with her lips. “Your father? He’s useless, that man! Just look at where we’ve ended up. I wouldn’t ask him for any favours. I can’t wait to get out of this city and get an apartment of my own! You’ll see, Hawk, we can do much better than this!”

  Hawk was puzzled at her bitterness, but within a few hours they had settled down, eaten some of the tandoori chicken and cold rice that Selim had left for them in the fridge, and generally made themselves at home. Storm Cloud rummaged in a bag that Selim had rescued from the trunk of the taxi and laid out some clothes for Hawk.

  “School tomorrow!” she reminded him, just before they turned out the light. “I’ll get you up when it’s time.”

  Hawk had a restless sleep and woke up first. It was a bit late, he noticed, as he shook his mother awake. They cleaned up in the restaurant washroom, ate a few bites of the leftovers, and hurried off toward the school.

  It was not a long walk, but all the way there Hawk was thinking, I’m going back to school! He kept catching his breath and couldn’t decide whether he was a bit scared or just very excited.

  Rawson School, an old red-brick school not far from Chinatown, was familiar enough. It had been the scene of his earlier conflicts with the terrible Mrs. MacWhinney. Despite their best efforts, Hawk and his mum were a little bit late, and Storm Cloud led the way, first into the main office and from there, with the blessings of the principal, to his new classroom.

  It was all so easy, except that, at the head of the stairs, he glanced into a classroom through an open door and caught a glimpse of an animated, irritated Mrs. MacWhinney chastising some poor student.

  Hawk made a nasty hand gesture at the frozen-faced woman and hurried on with his mother.

  “Uh, uh, uh,” said a blonde woman standing in the doorway of the next classroom. “None of that, young man!” Storm Cloud, who had also seen his reaction, gave him a withering look. “Nice way to begin,” she murmured.

  “This must be Hawk,” said the teacher. “Hello, Hawk. Hello, Mrs. Wilson — I’m Ms. Calloway. Ms. Clarke and I are the teachers for Grade Four Gifted. Ms. Clark will be here tomorrow. We’re glad you could join our class. I’ve asked Panny Chang to show you your seat.”

  Hawk slipped into the class. A smiling Panny greeted him and pointed to a seat in the middle of the classroom. “Good luck, Hawk-boy,” she whispered.

  The classroom was bright and airy. The seats were lined up in twos, facing each other, and ran up the middle of the large room. The blackboard at the front was almost invisible, covered with lists and charts. There were posters on the windows reading ARTS ALIVE, SCIENCE ROCKS, and LITERATURE FOR LIFE. A huge sign hung above the rear blackboard advising EXPLORE YOUR MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES. Beside it were pinned large photos of famous people illustrating the various human gifts, skills, or “intelligences” — verbal, logical, mathematical, musical, interpersonal, and several others.

  Hawk recognized Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Hayley Wickenheiser, and Mother Teresa among them. A number of computers were lined up on a long table, and there was a washstand and a display table piled high with class projects — imposing models of castles, jousts, and tournaments, a paper maché cathedral, and other 3-D representations of what looked like scenes from the Middle Ages. Finally, Hawk spotted a wall of books, neatly sorted and stashed in plastic milk cases.

  He swallowed hard and flopped down at his desk, staring at the maps and charts, and at the personal laptop computers on several students’ desks. He listened in amazement to the low hum of chatter that filled the room. The kids were working on some kind of project, and most of them were focused on that, although a few were stealing a look at their favourite books of the moment, while one or two seemed to be just fooling around.

  When Ms. Calloway returned to her desk a few moments later, she zeroed in on the chatterers and got them to quiet down. Then she darted around the room, advising here and there, lifting books from the distracted and getting them back on course, and finally stopping beside Hawk’s desk.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute, Hawk, at my desk?”

  Hawk jumped up and followed her. He felt the eyes of several of the kids on him, and heard whispers behind his back.

  “Get back to your work!” Ms. Calloway ordered. She sat down and motioned the boy to a folding chair beside her desk.

  “Now, Hawk, I know you started the year in another class. You realize that the board has made a very big exception in transferring you at this date?”

  He nodded, somewhat overawed by her strong presence. She didn’t look like a teacher, more like a woman on TV, someone who might speak out for some good cause: the homeless, refugees, or the environment maybe. She wore a white blouse and jeans, and had curly blonde hair and metal earrings that swung as she spoke. She had a nice smile and clear blue eyes, but he didn’t think she’d put up with any nonsense.

  Ms. Calloway continued. “If you do well in our class, you might be promoted to Gifted Grade Five, but that will require that you really do well. We’ll be helping you. We want you to succeed. You’ve got the ability — your tests show that — but you haven’t done that well so far. I realize it won’t be easy, since you haven’t been with us the whole year, but we’ll try to catch you up. Ms. Clarke and I agree on this. Come to either of us if you need help, understand?”

  Hawk nodded. “Sure, Ms. … Thanks!”

  “All right then. Pay attention to what’s happening in here, and when your turn comes, do your best. Everybody’s unique, and you’ve got a lot to contribute, I’m sure.”

  Then, to his acute embarrassment, Ms. Calloway introduced him to the class. “This is Hawk Wilson, who has come to us late in the year. All the more reason we should encourage him and help him to become a real contributor to this class! Let’s welcome him, Room 21, all together now!”

  There was applause and a few cheers. Blushing, Hawk returned to his seat. He refused to look around, but took out his pencils and the pad his mother had bought him. Then he noticed a small piece of paper on his desk, folded like the message in a fortune cookie. He opened it up and read, Hi, Pocahontas. What kind of hairspray do you use?

  Chapter 10

  Dangerous Connections

  Hawk felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. He crumpled up the paper and threw it on the floor.

  Someone hissed a warning. He looked up and saw Panny giving him a “what’s going on?” look. He shrugged his shoulders and opened his notebook.

  “Now we’re going to have three personal contributions on the Middle Ages from those of you who wrote your essays on medieval themes,” Ms. Calloway announced. “Rahul, do you want to go first?”

  “Okay.”

  A short, stocky boy got out of his seat and headed for the front of the class. He was wearing dark trousers and a bright white shirt that contrasted nicely with his glossy black hair and cinnamon-coloured skin.

  “I wrote my essay on the monasteries,” he reminded them. “My personal creative contribution is a story I’ve written about a monk who finds a manuscript from Roman times, one that tells about the Greek gods, which, when he reads it, makes him lose his faith in Christ and start believing in Zeus, Hermes,
Artemis, and the other gods. But first I’ll remind you of their Roman names.”

  Hawk sat wide-eyed, wondering if this boy was some kind of genius, or maybe he had swallowed a USB memory stick that some history professor had lost.

  The talk went on for a while. Hawk sat transfixed. Afterward there were several questions, and even a correction or two.

  “I think you’ve got a couple of the attributes of Hermes wrong,” a girl in sparkly jeans suggested.

  Ms. Calloway led a brief discussion about the transition from the pagan gods to Christianity. There were a few probing questions. Hawk looked on, amazed. He was trying desperately to remember the rough dates for the Middle Ages.

  The second “personal contribution” was a modern rewriting of Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale.” Hawk had a vague notion that Chaucer was some kind of famous poet of the Middle Ages, but he didn’t even know what a pardoner was. The presenter this time was a boy named Albert Mostley, a chubby, bespectacled kid with unruly red hair. His vocabulary was enormous and he dropped in a few side remarks that had the class roaring with laughter.

  By the time this presentation was over, Hawk had learned a lot about Chaucer — and his world — but he was also ready to run out of the room and disappear. What kind of class had he landed in? He would never make it with this bunch. “Smarts” were one thing, but being a walking, breathing, ad-libbing encyclopedia was another!

  The last talk, however, really sank his hopes. A student named Wang got up, a nearsighted, slender boy with a crewcut and a “Walk for Cancer” T-shirt, and proceeded to trace out the relations between medieval Europe and China. Not only did he flash maps of the trade routes, and charts of important dates and personages, but he offered them a comparison between the main dialects of Chinese and those of Turkish middlemen on the Spice Road between east and west using, of course, the original languages and explaining the most important Chinese characters and how they had changed over the centuries.

  This talk was so knockout smart that Hawk didn’t expect any tough class questions, but there were a couple, and Ms. Calloway mentioned a few things about the spice road that even young Wang didn’t know. She also promised to play the class some music by a Canadian singer who had travelled that route a few years before and had written music about her experiences with different cultures.

  Minutes later came the lunch break. Of course, Hawk hadn’t brought any lunch, and he wandered out of the room in a daze, wondering if he should head home then, or just wait to get kicked out of the class when his turn came to show his work.

  He was looking around for Panny, who seemed to have been delayed in the classroom, when a tall, dark-haired boy approached him and shook his hand, “My name is Charles,” he said. “Welcome to the class.” Hawk mumbled a thanks. The boy had a bright and glittering smile that Hawk didn’t quite like.

  “You got my note?” the boy asked. “Just a little joke, of course. It doesn’t matter if you’re Native. I’m inviting you into my club anyway. It’s a special group — called the Ferrets. The members are all my friends. It’s a secret society and the teachers don’t know, so if you say a word to anyone, you’re toast. I mean anyone. It would be a good idea to join. There’s an initiation, of course — and there’s dues. I have lots of members, though, and I can protect you, because you’ll work for me.”

  With that the tall boy drifted off to join a couple of his friends who had stood by smirking as they watched the proceedings with a fixed, goggle-eyed intensity.

  Hawk just stood there, stunned. Slowly, he wandered down the hall, past the gabbing, joking kids. No one paid him much attention. He wondered what he had gotten into, coming to this school. These kids were all too weird. Too smart in the wrong way. Scary. Maybe he should head home right away. He felt so confused; he didn’t know what to do.

  “Hello! Hawk! Wait a minute, please.” Ms. Calloway stood at the classroom door, calling after him. She beckoned to him and he drifted slowly back.

  “You were going to the lunchroom, I suppose,” she said. “We don’t sell food at the school, Hawk, and it looks like you haven’t brought any.” Ms. Calloway smiled, but her voice was warm and somehow reassuring.

  “Panny had to stay behind a minute to talk to me about her presentation, but she and Albert are going to share with you,” she told him. “In fact, here they are now. I hope you’re going to enjoy your time with us, Hawk. I’ll want you to do a presentation to the class, but in your case I think we can expand the subject a bit. So give some thought to what you want to talk about.”

  “Okay…. Thanks, Ms. Calloway.”

  Panny and Albert slid up beside him and Albert tapped him on the shoulder. “You can have half my ham sandwich,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that for just anyone,” he added.

  “And I’ve got an extra muffin,” Panny said. “Bring some food tomorrow, Hawk-boy!”

  Ms. Calloway laughed and turned back to her classroom.

  “So, what was bugging you in there?” Panny asked. “You made a face and threw something on the floor like it was a bad message from a fortune cookie.”

  Hawk thought at once of Charles’s warning: If you say a word to anyone, you’re toast. He couldn’t just blab. He had to learn more about the Ferrets. Maybe this was a test. Maybe Panny and Albert were part of it!

  “So?” Panny waited for his answer.

  “Oh, nothing,” Hawk lied. I was just ticked off that I’d forgotten my lunch. I was pretty sure I couldn’t buy anything here and I was getting hungry.”

  “You want that sandwich right now?” Albert asked.

  “No, that’s okay. I feel better now…. Except that I don’t think I belong in this class. Those presentations were over the top. It would take me five years to do something like that.”

  “Oh? It only took me a few hours,” Albert said. “Actually, I wrote a whole detective story based on ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ and was going to recite it in Middle English, but I thought it would just confuse the class.”

  “Stop bragging,” Panny told him. “You know what Ms. Calloway says. We have to celebrate other people’s achievements, not just brag about our own. Now we have a chance to help the Hawk-boy get over his worries about being able to do a presentation.”

  “I don’t have any worries,” Hawk said.

  “Okay, you don’t have any worries, but we can still help you,” Panny insisted. “Now let’s eat!”

  They came to the bottom of the stairs and entered the lunchroom, a large space already packed with dozens of kids from various parts of the school. Hawk gazed around, dazzled by the noise, the buzzing energy, the ordered chaos of the place. Almost at once, he spotted Charles, ensconced with some of their classmates in a nearby corner. The dark-haired boy nodded vaguely at him and made a face. Hawk couldn’t quite read his expression, but he knew he didn’t like it.

  The three friends settled down together at the end of a long table and began their meal. With a resigned look, Albert passed half his sandwich over to Hawk. After the first few bites of food and a couple of sips of their shared juices, Panny said, “Okay, Hawk. So you have to do a presentation. Well, I have an idea for you — take it or leave it.”

  “What is it?” Hawk mumbled, reaching for one of the juice cans.

  “You should give a talk on Native life and customs or history,” Panny suggested. “We hear a lot about Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, the Jews, the Arabs, the Chinese — but almost nothing about our Native Canadian people. Does that interest you at all?”

  Hawk thought about it. He might be able to do it, but would his father despise him for it, thinking that his mother had suggested it? Would his mother try to take it over? And would he be able to dig up enough material — material that the kids would be interested in and take seriously? All of this weighed on him. He knew it would take up a lot of time; time he’d hoped to spend with Mr. Rizzuto looking for Babe Ruth’s lost baseball. He hadn’t dared speak of that quest to his father, and he was still a bit shy to tell hi
s new friends about it — they might laugh at him and tell him to “get real.”

  “I don’t know,” he said to Panny. “I don’t know if I should do that.”

  “Why not? Isn’t your father active in Native rights? I’m sure he’d be able to help you. You can call him on my phone right now. If he doesn’t like the idea, you can find something else. We can help you choose right now. And you can ask Ms. Calloway to approve it when we’re back in class.”

  She reached across the table and handed him the phone. He took it warily, hesitated for a moment, and then boldly dialed his father’s number.

  When Jim Eagleson first answered the phone he sounded gruff and angry, but he was surprised, and even pleased, when he realized that it was his son calling. Stumbling and fumbling a bit, Hawk managed to get out the information about the class project. His father asked a few questions, then there was a long pause. Finally, his father said, “Sure, it sounds like a good idea. Just get your teacher’s okay, and I can help you with it this weekend.”

  Hawk thanked him and then, encouraged by his father’s tone, quickly told him about their sudden move from the taxi into Selim’s room.

  “Hmmm…. That’s probably for the best,” his father said. “One month, huh? Well, hopefully something will happen in one month.”

  When Hawk handed the phone back to Panny, she gave him a look of mock disappointment. “That’s terrible, Hawk-boy. You mean I’ll never see your famous live-in taxi?”

  Out in the school playground a few of the boys asked Hawk to kick a soccer ball with them. One of them was Charles.