by Janis Owens
But Gabe was having none of his excuses. “Well, you should have,” he insisted with that chip-on-the-shoulder belligerence that got him kicked out of his Sunday-school class. “This kid has a turpentine song on tape—you ever heard a turpentine song recorded anywhere—the Smithsonian? The Florida State Museum?”
The neat little judge admitted he hadn’t, finally took the tapes and physical evidence back to the judges’ booth, where he must have conferred with the other judges, or maybe took the time to sit down and listen to them. For when he returned to the gym half an hour later, he was carrying another ribbon, a blue first-place one that he tacked on Kenneth’s project board with a little bow of apology.
We couldn’t believe our eyes, just stood there staring till Darius and Bobo ran up and let out another shout of triumph that broke our paralysis, made us all leap in the air, high-fiving and hollering like the hay-seeds we were.
The little judge didn’t look too annoyed at our enthusiasm, though, but was very gracious, even offered his hand to me when Gabe introduced us. “I very much enjoyed your project, Clayton,” he raised his voice over the roar to inform me politely. “I never met your father personally, but he sounds like he was a splendid man.”
I just shook his hand like a grown-up and thanked him, the thought coming to me that gosh, this must be one of Gabe’s gay friends from Tallahassee. I mean, who else wore checkered vests and watch chains, used words like splendid to describe a man? I must say I was pleasantly surprised, thought how nice gay people were; how could people say such nasty things about them?
That really was the tone of the evening: peace on earth, goodwill toward man, Mama coming to the gym when Sim arrived with Grannie (who couldn’t drive at night because of her cataracts), all of them so pleased and proud, beaming on me with undisguised affection. When seven-thirty rolled around, we all crowded into the auditorium for the awards ceremony, the Living Biography ribbons announced first, then the trophies by grade. All of us kids from LPM were about spastic by the time they made it to the eighth grade, especially Bobo, who’d been sucking down Coke all night and was about wired. I mean, when they finally got around to announcing the middle-school trophy and the judge looked up and said, “Lincoln Park Middle,” he let out a scream like a panther, he really did.
Everyone was pretty good-natured about it, though. They knew we were the poor goobers from the sticks and thunderously applauded as we went up to get the trophy, me and Bobo and Kenneth, because Darius and Travis and Ga’Lisa were too shy to go up front. I probably would have been, too, but had by gosh gotten pumped on all that caffeine and success, beat Bobo and Kenneth to the platform and took the trophy myself, held it over my head in triumph the way Missy did at softball tournaments. And though I had thought of a thousand speeches to make in the miraculous event we won, when the judge stepped back and indicated the microphone, I just leaned forward and grinned: “We’d like to thank the members of the Academy who voted for us,” like movie stars do at the Academy Awards.
I think it might have been the funniest thing I ever said in my life, for the whole auditorium exploded in laughter, me and Bobo loudest of all. We would have let it go at that and returned to our seats in triumph, but Kenneth apparently wanted to say something, too. With a timid glance at the judge, he stepped to the podium, trying to be cool, though it was clear that his old Italian blood was pumping, his face scarlet as he took a breath and added in this quivering little voice: “And we’d like to thank Dr. Catts,” he sniffed, “for coming to our school, and looking out for us.” He paused again, blinked hard. “For helping us remember, who we are.”
And I’ll tell you what: that was all she wrote for any of us, as far as the crying went. I think even the judges were going strong before it was over, and hardly remember the rest of the ceremony that passed in unparalleled victory, twenty-three kids from LPM placing in some category, nine of us getting first-place blue ribbons, one short of a county record. When it was all over, Mama took Miss Susan down to the gym to show her the projects and the rest of us returned to the cafeteria so me and Kenneth could finish the hamburgers we’d left on the counter two hours before.
By then, the crowd was considerably thinned, Missy able to take a break and join us while Gabe stood at the door, chatting with an adoring knot of parents. We were still flying high, told her all about our speeches (that she’d missed since she was working the booth), both of us singing the praises of the little judge who’d changed Kenneth’s ribbon. I described his vest and his watch chain in some detail, even speculated that he was probably one of Gabe’s gay friends from Tallahassee, making Missy look up, breathe: “What?”
Just like that, I knew I’d done something very stupid and tried to back up, though Missy wouldn’t let me, her face amused and positively amazed. “What d’you mean, gay friend?” she insisted. Then, before I could answer: “You think Gabe’s gay?”
Well, I didn’t anymore, and shook my head with great passion and outrage, saying “No, no—”
But it was too late. Missy just stood and called across the cafeteria, “Uncle Gabe! Come here!”—her face lit with laughter, like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard in her life.
Well, I saw then that it was time to be leaving and leaving quickly; jumped up and abandoned my hamburger for the second time that night, took off down the hall to the gym, where the womenfolk were still wandering through the projects, basking in the glory of our blue ribbons. When I told Mama that I wanted to leave, she didn’t argue, just went on and on all the way home about how proud she was of me, how well I’d done. I just nodded, didn’t pay her much mind, to tell you the truth, was too intent on getting to the safety of my bedroom. I hightailed it upstairs as soon as we walked in the house and leaped into bed, pretending to sleep, though it wasn’t long before there was a quiet knock at my door.
But it wasn’t Gabe; it was Missy, still in her apron from the fund-raiser, her hair in a bun. She didn’t wait for me to invite her in, just came in and stood by the bed. “You asleep?” she asked in this small, conciliatory voice. I turned to the wall in reply, making her exhale hugely, say, “Clay”—sigh—“listen. I didn’t mean to, like, publicly humiliate you, or anything. It was just kind of—funny, is all. Where’d you come up with such a goofy notion, anyway? That numbskull Kenneth?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered to the wall, though Missy just grabbed me by my shirt and hauled me to my back.
“Oh, lighten up, Claybird.” She grinned. “Kenneth told Gabe and I’m the one who had to ride home with the raging lunatic uncle—like being trapped in a Volvo with King Lear. You can tell old Missy, I won’t tell anyone.”
It was always hard to resist her when she was being playful; she sounded too much like Daddy, and looked like him, too, her fair, freckled face lit with his irrepressible grin. After a moment, I sat up on my elbow and told her in an exasperated little voice: “Miss Cassie, remember? After the funeral? I told you she told me.”
Missy wrinkled her brow at that, then looked at me with new interest. “Is that the weird thing she told you about Gabe? That he was gay?”
I nodded, kind of surprised at the evident shock on her face, that made her draw back and blink at me like an owl. “Well, Claybird,” she finally said, “him and Mama have been, you know, happily married since Christmas, rattling the walls about three times a week.” When I didn’t reply, she offered: “Well, don’t you think that says something about his—you know—sexual orientation?”
For a moment, I faced her off levelly, then dropped back on the bed. “Not when you’re a retard,” I said.
She didn’t argue the matter, just stood there a moment, then backed to the door. “Well, I snagged you a couple of free burgers,” she said, “left them on the stove.”
I nodded my thanks, though Missy didn’t leave right away, just kept standing at the door, watching me, finally added in a small, pitying voice: “And Clay, listen: I wouldn’t be so hard on myself, if I was you. I
mean, it’s really not your fault, that you’re always so terminally confused.” I thought she was talking about the dyslexia, but she just motioned at the dark hallway at her back. “It’s this house,” she said. “Remember when you and Kenneth were little, you thought it was haunted? You dug up the front yard, looking for graves?”
I nodded, and Missy smiled a smile that was sad and down-tilted, made her very much resemble our mother. “Well, you were right,” she said with a sudden, small intensity. “It is haunted. Our whole family, it’s full of secrets; full of ghosts.”
I’d been around Gabe enough by then to understand that she was speaking symbolically, though I didn’t know what the heck she was talking about, because never in my life had I felt less haunted, less grieved and abandoned, than when I’d stood on the stage that night and made my well-received little quip.
My face must have shown it, for Missy just eyed me a moment, then sighed. “Well, just don’t be surprised if you stumble upon one, and soon. Don’t flip out on me or anything, ’kay?”
She left on that odd piece of advice, said good night and went to bed, though I didn’t get up right away, just lay there faceup in bed till almost twelve, when hunger drove me downstairs to the burgers on the stove. I figured everyone would be in bed by then, the living room hung in gray shadow, but when I came around the corner to the kitchen, I found Gabe sitting at the table drinking coffee, still in his dress shirt from the fair, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. There was no possibility of retreat, him lifting his face as soon as he saw me, asking: “You all right?”
I just stood there frozen for a moment, then inched my way to the stove, to the sack of burgers that still rested there. “Missy already talked to me,” I said, hoping that would be the end of it, though Gabe, being Gabe, wouldn’t let the matter pass without discussion.
“So you thought I was gay?” he asked bluntly.
I was so embarrassed I wanted to crawl under the table, though Gabe didn’t seem too shocked or horrified, just muttered: “Oh, Clay, git your eyes off your feet—good Lord, you look like your mother.” I looked up warily then, hardly able to meet his eye, though you could tell he was letting me off easy like he always did, his voice a good-natured tease. “I don’t know why you went tearing out of the cafeteria like that—you shouldn’t let these bullshitters around here intimidate you. It was an honest mistake. What else could have accounted for my great good looks and buff physique and artistic temperament? I’m just one of those rare sensitive, good-looking Adonis straight guys, and God knows you don’t see many of us around these parts. It was a purely understandable error.”
I smiled at that, I couldn’t help it, and once he saw I wasn’t embarrassed anymore, he quit his teasing and gestured for me to join him. I took my bag of burgers to the table and we sat there and talked while I ate—not about anything serious, but Sim’s graduation on Friday night, and whether or not I should risk rejection and invite Rachel to our end-of-the-year dance, stuff like that. When we were finished, Gabe went to the sink to rinse out his cup, said over his shoulder: “Oh—and Missy said there’s a snake in the pool. She saw it when we came in.”
I nodded, for spring was a suicidal season for snakes in our backyard, all the baby ones hatching and instinctively heading for the water, not smart enough to tell our pool from a lake till they got over the tiles. It’d be dead if I left it till morning, so I went out and searched for it in the dark, finally found it in the deep end under the diving board, bumping its head against the marble, trying like heck to get out. I didn’t bother with the net, just offered a palm frond that it wrapped itself around in a fenzy of relief, hardly bigger than an earthworm, only five or six inches long, a baby black racer by the look of it.
Gabe waited for me at the French door, then walked me upstairs, not mentioning my project at all till we were at my bedroom door, when he paused a moment, told me again what a great job I’d done; how I’d interpreted the facts unemotionally, and how that was a hard thing to do. “But my favorite part was the dedication,” he added. “That was very touching, Clay. Very nice.”
I was too embarrassed to do anything but look at my feet, though he didn’t seem to require anything in the way of a response, just stuck his hands in his pockets and commented in a reflective little voice: “You know, I think it’s kind of touching and laudable, that you—this fundamental Baptist kid—thought I was gay and took it so well. I mean, you and Kenneth were so protective of me. You took my side a thousand times. You got that from Michael, you know. He had that same natural acceptance. He had a good heart.” He paused as if to say something else, but just shook his head, added with a fond little smile: “Calmer of babies, rescuer of snakes—you know, Clay, I think you have the seeds of a great humanitarian in you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The seeds of a great humanitarian,” he said with all his old pomp and certainty, and such was the depth of my infatuation that I didn’t even roll my eyes or laugh: I believed him. That’s the pity of it: I really did, the summer stretching out before me, ripe with promise, my oral-history project going on to regionals, where Bobo snagged a first-place trophy, though me and Kenneth only came in second and third respectively, good enough, on that level.
I couldn’t complain, for in the meanwhile, I’d gotten my final report card from Lincoln Park, where by some miracle of God, I made the honor roll and got my name in the paper for the very first time. That was glory enough for anyone, though it was only a couple of weeks later that a pale blue envelope from the school-board office finally winged its way to our mailbox, summoning Mama in for a meeting to change my Individual Education Plan.
Now, Mama’s about as swift as me about reading legal documents and didn’t know quite what to make of it; neither did I. We knew it was Big News, but had to wait for Gabe and Missy to come home from one of her softball games before we found out that this handful of flimsy yellow photocopies was the official results of the IQ test I’d taken back in January.
“Did I make it?” I kept jumping around and begging as Gabe stood there in the doorway and impatiently scanned the legal jargon and signatures, searching for something that he must have found on the top of the third page.
For he suddenly shouted: “Yes!” in triumph, then held out the paper to me, boomed: “Clayton Michael Catts, come and read the Magic Number!”
He pointed at a number scribbled in a box in the corner that I read aloud in a hesitant little voice (because I still sometimes read numbers backwards): “A hundred and forty-two?” then looked up. “What does that mean?”
Before he could answer, Missy, who was standing in the door of the laundry room, stripping out of her sweaty jersey, let out a noise of disbelief, called in this taunting little singsong: “Uncle Ga-be. You cheat-ed—”
“Did not,” he returned, though it wasn’t until Mama snatched the paper from me that I understood the significance of the enormous number, when she looked up in amazement, asked: “That’s his IQ? A hundred and forty-two?”
“A hundred forty-two, my behind,” Missy called from the laundry room, for being the Resident Genius of the Catts family was her Claim to Fame, and she didn’t much like sharing the glory.
Even after Mama went down to the county offices and changed all my paperwork and I was officially transferred from special-ed to Gifted, Missy remained a skeptic, which wasn’t what you might call an isolated opinion in the larger Catts family. Even Grannie looked kind of suspicious when I told her the Big News.
“Well, shug,” she asked after a moment, “how come them to send you to thet special class all these years?”
I tried to explain that I was both dyslexic and gifted, that there was actually such a creature, even brought up Albert Einstein, though you could tell Grannie wasn’t overly familiar with the name. She just gave a polite little sniff of disbelief, murmured: “Well, I declare.”
But nothing they said could steal the glory of the day, me and Kenneth suddenly Brothers in Brilliance, full of plans
for high school, where we’d have most of our classes together now that I was on the Gifted track. We talked about it all summer, signed up for all these butt-kicking classes when we went to Open House in July—Latin and algebra and honors civics—with Gabe acting as my educational director, Missy, my personal buyer.
For my sister has always been an unashamed popularity hound, and as August drew near, she became increasingly concerned that I’d show up in town the first day of school in my old Wranglers and crew cut and ruin her good name and reputation as a Millionaire’s Daughter. All summer long she pored over Seventeen magazine and studied the cast of Beverly Hills 90210, till she finally nosed out a New Look that was centered around three comfortable items: tennis shoes and knee-length shorts and big surfer T-shirts, preferably with cool slogans on them (RON JON and NO FEAR and the like).
I didn’t mind, for under Gabe’s liberalizing influence, I was getting kind of tired of doing that redneck thang myself and was pleased with my New Look, my blond hair and general chunkiness suddenly more Beach Boy than Mama’s Boy, my belly camouflaged by a good-natured bagginess from neck to knee. Even Missy seemed halfway satisfied with the result, standing in the dressing room of an Athletic Attic the Friday before school started and surveying me with a look of unusual seriousness.
“You know, Clay,” she mused, “underneath that roll of baby fat and that cornpone haircut, I’m beginning to see a glimpse of a decent-looking young man, one that I would not be ashamed to call brother. If we could just get rid of that two-inch space between your teeth, we would be well on the way to setting him free.”
Because that was my one redneck holdout: unlike Sim and Missy, I still sported a tiny little gap we’d all inherited from Daddy, that they’d had painstakingly corrected with braces and permanent retainers and (in Missy’s case) even dental surgery. I probably would have gone the same route, but Daddy died before my first orthodontic appointment came around, and Mama so missed his gap-toothed smile that she let me go natural. This suited me down to the ground, for I’d always liked the stubborn little imperfection in my otherwise dimpled, girlie smile that made me favor Daddy a little (a very little) and, better yet, meant I could spit through my teeth like he used to, in a way I’d always found kind of manly and attractive.