Me and Mr. Bell

by Philip Roy

  Mr. McLeary glared at me. “What?”

  “Fill the path with stones. It’ll give the cows something to walk on.”

  He made a face as if I had just said the dumbest thing in the world. Then he turned and stared at the path. Then he turned and stared at his hayfield, where there were huge piles of stones on the sides. He stuck out his arm, and I passed him the sledgehammer. It was so heavy I had to use two arms just to hold it, but he took it in one hand as if it didn’t weigh anything at all.

  “Thank your daddy,” he said roughly.

  “Okay.” I turned around and walked away. I waited to hear the sound of the sledgehammer crashing into a post, but it never came. The next morning, on my way to school, I saw Mr. McLeary pushing a wheelbarrow full of stones into the field. I think he saw me, but he pretended he didn’t. By the end of the week, he had created a wide stone lane across his field. It looked really good. His cows came in and out without slipping. I heard my mother and father talk about it. They thought he had been clever. On my way to school, I saw Mr. McLeary standing on the lane, looking proud of the stone path. He still raised his eyebrows at me.

  Chapter 5

  Miss Lawrence had brown hair and brown eyes and every day she wore the same brown dress, brown shoes and brown coat to school. She came inside, unbuttoned her coat, hung it up on the coat rack, took a handkerchief out of her pocket and squeezed it into her sleeve. And it stayed there all day and never fell out. The only change she ever made was once she sewed a patch over a hole in her coat. At first the patch was darker brown than the rest of her coat, but by the end of the year it was the same colour.

  We studied math first thing every morning. I liked math. I found it easy when the exercises were read out loud and I could do them in my head. Most of my friends were the opposite; they couldn’t do it in their heads – they needed to see it written down on the page. Sometimes they would ask for my help, if they were really stuck. They would tell me the question out loud, and I would give them the answer. But no one gave me credit for being smart, because I couldn’t read the questions.

  After math we had reading, which was usually pretty boring. Miss Lawrence always stood perfectly still in front of the class while she read to us. Sometimes I imagined that she was a talking tree. I daydreamed a lot in school. I couldn’t help it. My mind liked to wander.

  Then one day, Miss Lawrence opened a new book, and everything changed for me. She started to read about ancient Greece. I didn’t know why, but everything about ancient Greece interested me. My friends thought it was boring, but I couldn’t get enough of it. It became the most interesting thing I ever learned in school.

  In ancient Greece, it was always hot and sunny. People would sit around on hills, in the daytime or at night, where it was always warm, and ask interesting questions and tell great stories. The ocean was green, or blue, and sparkled with flecks of gold. There were olive trees, orange trees, lemon trees and cherry trees. There were pink mountains with golden temples on top and dry, dusty plains that stretched forever and sun-baked beaches where the sand shone like gold and probably had gold in it.

  There were gods and goddesses, like Apollo and Athena, and heroes like Hercules, Achilles and Odysseus. There were rulers, like Alexander the Great, and philosophers who walked around outside and asked important questions, like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates. There were writers, like Homer, who was blind, and mathematicians, like Archimedes.

  Of all of them, the one who fascinated me the most was Archimedes, because he invented tools that gave the power of a hundred men to just one person. Even to a boy. And you didn’t have to be a god or a ruler or a hero. You could be an ordinary person. While my friends yawned and rolled their eyes, I listened to every word Miss Lawrence read as if it carried magic power. Because it did.

  But then, Miss Lawrence passed the book around and made everyone read a little bit of what she had just read, and that just about ruined it for me. Nobody could read it as well as she did. Nobody could say the names right. And when it was my turn, I couldn’t read it at all and had to fake it, which was what I always did at reading time – I tried really hard to remember what she had read, then sort of made it up. And no one cared because no one was paying that much attention in the first place, and nobody expected me to get it right. When we read it, it took the magic right out of it.

  The first day that Miss Lawrence read from the book, I asked if I could stay in for lunch and look at it by myself, but she said no, go outside and play. The second day, she just stared at me, looked kind of frustrated, but said, okay, read for a little while, then go outside. I said thank you. I didn’t actually want to read the book; I just wanted to look at the pictures.

  Some of the pictures showed pulleys, wheels, ropes, ramps and arrows pointing in every direction. One picture showed a small man lifting a heavy stone block off the ground just by pulling down on a rope. There were pictures of old men and their names, but I couldn’t tell who was who, except that the man next to the pulleys was probably Archimedes. All of the men were old and had white beards, just like Mr. Bell. He would fit in perfectly. At the top of the diagrams of pulleys were two long words. When I gave Miss Lawrence back the book, I asked her what they said.

  “Applied Mathematics.”

  “What does it mean?”

  She frowned at me and sighed. “Why are you so interested in that, Eddie? It means when you use mathematics to move things around.” She picked up the pointer, reached up and stabbed a book on the top shelf of the bookcase. “That’s Applied Mathematics. But it’s way over your head, Eddie. It’s too hard for most people to understand.”

  “Does it have pictures in it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never opened the book.”

  “Thank you, Miss Lawrence.” That’s what I thought. Applied mathematics was a kind of magic that let you move heavy things around as if they weighed nothing. It was a kind of magic that was real. Who wouldn’t be interested in that?

  I stared at the big book on the shelf and wondered if it had pictures in it. It bothered me so much that I couldn’t read. And it didn’t make sense. Why would I be so good at math but so terrible at reading and writing? I thought about it all the way home from school. At home, I took my school book, scribbler and pencil, sat on my bed and decided to teach myself how to read and write. If Helen Keller could learn to write, then so could I. First I would teach myself how to write numbers, then other things after that. The number I wanted to start with was eight.

  I opened my school book, found the numbers list and copied out the word eight. It had five letters. That seemed easy enough. I copied the word exactly as it was in the book. Then I turned to another page in my scribbler and wrote it out ten times. Then I compared my writing with the word in the book. I couldn’t believe it – I had spelled it wrong six times! Six times, I wrote eihgt instead of eight. They looked the same to me. It was only when I went from letter to letter with the pencil that I saw the difference.

  Okay, I thought, I’ll try it again. So I did. This time, I got it wrong only twice. That was better, but I still couldn’t believe I had spelled it wrong at all. And it was tiring. It was easier to run all the way across the field and back than it was to write out a number twenty times. At least writing the letters down so many times made me feel confident that I would remember the difference now between h and n – h had a long stick and n had a short one, like in the word no.

  Next I practised writing the number one. As I stared at it, I wondered why it didn’t start with a w. Shouldn’t it? It sounded like it did. I said the word slowly and carefully. Yes, it definitely sounded like a w. But there wasn’t a w in the word. Why did we have a w if we didn’t always use it? That didn’t make sense at all. But one only had three letters and was fairly easy to remember. I got it right every time. And that felt good.

  I moved on to the number two. Words were just shapes, like trees or horses or barn
s, except that if you added a few pieces of wood to a barn or took a few pieces away, it was still a barn. You wouldn’t mistake it for a tree or a horse. And if you took a branch away from a tree or a leg away from a horse, you would still know it was a tree and a horse. You wouldn’t think it was a barn. But if you made even the tiniest change to a word, it wasn’t the same word anymore. It became something else. I had already learned that the hard way.

  As I stared at the word two, I saw something I couldn’t believe. It had a w in it! But you didn’t pronounce it. Now this was crazy. Why would one word be missing the letter that you spoke and the next word be using it when you didn’t speak it? I didn’t know who invented our language, but this seemed pretty stupid to me. How were you supposed to remember that?

  After practising just three words, I was exhausted. I wanted some fresh air, so I went outside, crossed the yard and climbed the fence behind the barn. I picked up some rocks and threw them at the fence post. This was something I was good at, and it felt good. After I threw about twenty-five rocks and hit the post sixteen or seventeen times, I went back in the house. But just before I did, I took a sharp rock and scratched the word eight into the wall of the barn. It was a word I would never forget.

  Back inside my room, I sat down and stared at the number three. I had a nagging feeling inside. Had I put the g and h in the right order on the barn? I thought I had but wasn’t sure. I sat on my bed and tried to continue studying, but it was bugging me so much I couldn’t concentrate. I had to know. So I took my school book outside to compare. As I stared at the back of the barn, then looked into the book, I saw that the word scratched into the wood was spelled wrong. I stared at it for a long time. It felt as if someone, somewhere, or maybe the whole world even, was trying to tell me something. And what they were trying to tell me was that it was hopeless; it really was.

  Chapter 6

  The third time I met Mr. Bell I was down at the lake on a gloomy, rainy day. I was walking along the beach, picking up shells and stones and throwing them into the water. As I wandered along, I wondered if nature really did make mistakes. Were any of these shells a mistake? Were any of these stones a mistake? What about those waves? Were they all perfect, or were some not as perfect as the others? What was a mistake anyway, something that didn’t do what it was supposed to do? Why would a calf be born blind then die? Why did some potatoes grow big and others small? Why were some apples shrivelled up and covered with rough skin? Why was I born with a stronger left hand if I wasn’t allowed to use it for writing? Why would I be good at math but hopeless at writing? I stared far out on the lake. It was so dark and gloomy. If nature did make mistakes, could they be fixed?

  As I reached the far side of the cove where the beach ended and where the rocks went up the hill into the woods that led to Beinn Bhreagh, the land owned by the Bells, I saw a large man bent over the water, picking up a piece of wood. He looked like one of the locals from a distance. Up close I saw that it was Mr. Bell. He was standing close to the trees, as he if had just snuck out of the woods and didn’t want anybody to see him. He looked sleepy. When he saw me, he smiled. I didn’t want to bother him, but he waved for me to come over. “Ahoy! Eddie! Come and say hello!”

  “Good morning, Mr. Bell.”

  “Good morning, lad. Have you ever seen a finer morning on the lake?”

  I looked at the darkness of the lake to see if I had missed anything. “No, Sir.”

  “And how does it go, my friend? I can see by the look on your face that you’re carrying a weight.”

  I didn’t know anyone could see it in my face. “Mr. Bell, do you believe that nature makes mistakes?”

  Mr. Bell stood up straight and stared at me with a look almost of shock, as if I had poked him with a stick. “Nature makes mistakes? Good heavens, my boy, the last time I saw you, you were trying to measure the roundness of the earth. Today, you’re considering nature’s manufacturability. You’re quite the philosopher, my young friend.”

  “Thank you, Sir.” I didn’t know why he called me a philosopher, but I didn’t mind.

  He raised a hand to his beard, and I could tell he was thinking about it. He continued to look surprised. “Does nature make mistakes? Well, I suppose that would be like asking if God makes mistakes, wouldn’t it? And I suppose I would have to answer that, no, God doesn’t make mistakes. Thus, we would have to conclude that nature doesn’t make mistakes either.” He furrowed his brow. “But I sense that you are asking this question for a deeper reason than just a passing curiosity. Why do you want to know?”

  I dropped my head. “Because I think nature made a mistake with me. I’m good at math, and I think I’m smart enough, but when I try to read or write, it just doesn’t work. When I just look at words it feels like a cow is sitting on my head. There must be a mistake somewhere.”

  He squinted at me. “Yes, you’re smart enough; I can see that for myself. Tell me what happened.”

  So I told him about my attempts to write out numbers. And he listened as carefully as if I had been explaining how the planets moved around the sun. When I finished, he was silent for a while. He was thinking. Finally he said, “How many letters are in the alphabet?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “What’s half of twenty-six?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “What’s half of thirteen?”

  “Six and a half.”

  “What’s half of that?”

  “Um … three and a quarter.”

  “Okay. And what’s a hundred times three and a quarter?”

  I had to think about that for a while. Mr. Bell took out a small notepad from his jacket pocket and wrote something down while he waited for me. I recognized his pencil.

  “I think it is three hundred and twenty-five, Sir.”

  “Right you are! Now, how do you spell boat?”

  I took a deep breath. I was pretty sure it started with a b, because of the sound of it. And it probably ended with a d or a t; I wasn’t sure which. It only had an o sound in the middle. “Is it b-o-d?”

  He twisted his head sideways, but didn’t answer. “And how do you spell lake?”

  I was glad he was asking me easy words. “I think it’s l-a-k.”

  He rubbed his beard. “Hmmm. And how do you spell dream?”

  I closed my eyes and thought about it. I could hear the e sound and knew that it must end with an m, but I couldn’t figure out how it started.

  “Does it start with a j?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  Mr. Bell frowned. He was thinking hard now. “Let’s try something else. See if you can remember these numbers.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thirteen … twenty-six … thirty-nine … forty-five … fifty-six. Here, I’ll say them again.” And he did. I closed my eyes and concentrated hard. “Now, before you try to repeat them, try to remember these letters: d – r – e – a – m. I’ll repeat them, too.” And he did. “Okay. What were the numbers?”

  “Thirteen, twenty-six, thirty-nine, forty-five and fifty-six.”

  “Excellent! And the letters?”

  I tried hard to remember. “Um … d ….” What came next? I didn’t know. But I thought I remembered an m. “M? I can’t remember any more of them.”

  Mr. Bell looked at me beneath his bushy eyebrows and smiled. “Yes, I see what you mean, Eddie. We’ve got something here that begs looking at.” He raised his eyebrows and his face suddenly lit up. “Did you know, recently, we crashed another flying machine?”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Sir.”

  “Bah! There’s nothing to be sorry about. The crash is just a detail, Eddie. The miracle is that we got the thing in the air in the first place. And it was carrying a man! It was a glorious success!” He stared at me to see what I would say. But I didn’t know how to answer.

 
“Before you go any further, Eddie, you must learn to celebrate your successes. You can certainly celebrate that you’ve got a first-class mind in mathematics. And you’re a smart boy, you really are. And you might even consider celebrating that you spelled the word eight correctly eight times out of ten. Celebrate your success with it. Don’t dwell on your failures.” He stopped, pulled on his beard and frowned. “On the other hand, our failures are our friends, too.”

  “What?” Now he was losing me.

  “Well, truth is, we learn quite a lot from our failures. We learn, for instance, what didn’t work. This helps us to try something new. In fact, maybe if we didn’t have failure at all, we wouldn’t keep on trying. We wouldn’t work so hard.” Now it sounded like Mr. Bell was talking to himself as much as he was talking to me. “And so … as much as we should celebrate our successes, I suppose we have to be grateful for our failures, too. That’s a funny thought now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Tell me, Eddie, can you come to our house next week on Saturday, in the afternoon? I would like you to meet a very special lady who will be visiting us then.”

  I knew he meant Helen Keller. “Yes, Sir. I would love to.”

  “Good! Come in the early afternoon. We’ll be on the porch. Just come up and show yourself, and I’ll introduce you to everyone. Will you do that?”

  “Yes, Sir. I will. Thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, in the meantime, concentrate on celebrating your successes and being grateful for your failures, too. And when we meet next, tell me which you have found more useful to you.”

  “Yes, Sir, I will.”