Rhonda’s hand went protectively to her back pocket and she shook her head. “Nope.”
“Come on,” said Lee, “this is important—what’ve you got?”
“It’s a Mars Bar, if you must know,” said Rhonda, “and you’re not getting your hands on it.”
Lee screwed up his eyes and gave her a piercing, “you greedy little scum” look.
Rhonda sighed and handed over the half-melted Mars Bar. “There goes my allowance,” she moaned. Lee snatched it and ripped the wrapper with his teeth. He ran a few steps next to the delirious runner who hadn’t given up the chant: “… pickles onions on a sesame seed bum …”
“It’s bun, bro, not bum,” whispered Lee into the runner’s ear, hoping to save the guy some embarrassment. Gad, wasn’t it bad enough that he was staggering around like a zombie after one too many martinis? Lee shoved the Mars Bar into the guy’s limp hand. “Here. You need this, dude. Go on, eat it. It might give you the strength you need to finish.”
Although Lee’s asthma was already acting up, he stayed with the runner long enough to recognize a change in his chant. At first the words weren’t clear, but with every step the runner’s voice became stronger. “I think I can, I think I can …”
Lee’s face opened into a broad smile. “I know you can, buddy,” he whispered.
Whether you think you can or think you can’t—you are right.
– Henry Ford
CHAPTER SIX
“Put your tongue back in your head, Lee,” said Gertrude. It was the second time in two days someone had told him that.
Lee had the habit of licking a spot just above the upper left corner of his lip whenever he was concentrating hard. And he was concentrating hard now. Gertrude stepped away from the frying pan and tried to take a peek at what he was writing. Lee covered the page with his hands. “Just homework,” he said. Gertrude gave a disbelieving grunt and went back to frying eggs.
“Why are you up so early, anyway?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Project due,” said Lee. “Have to use the school library.” He looked at her to see if she’d swallowed that one. The teddy bears on her backside stared blankly at him. That was his mother all over—hard as nails in most respects, but crazy enough to wear a huge pink bathrobe covered in fuzzy pooh-bears.
Lee went back to practicing his mother’s signature, copied from an old canceled check lying on the kitchen table. When he had it just right, he scrawled it at the bottom of the note he’d already printed:
Please excuse Lee from school today. He isn’t well.
– Gertrude McGillicuddy
He’d get Rhonda (well, bribe Rhonda) to hand it in to his teacher this morning. Figured a Mars Bar would about do it. He folded the note carefully in half, and then into thirds (the way mothers are prone to do), and tucked it into his bathrobe pocket. Then he bolted down the fried eggs and toast that Gertrude set in front of him. “Thanks, Mom,” he said, spraying toast crumbs, and he hurried to his bedroom, wiping the corners of his eggy mouth on his bathrobe sleeve.
Once inside, Lee locked his bedroom door, pulled a box out from under his bed, dumped the items on the floor and surveyed them: one baseball cap, four granola bars, three water bottles, full, one cap gun, one empty margarine container with a string through a hole near its rim, a baggie full of fruit-and-nut trail mix (he thought about picking out those disgusting little dried papaya chunks, then decided he could always feed them to Santiago along the way), five dog biscuits, one dog leash, one collapsible white metal pole from his pup tent, one digital watch, one asthma inhaler, one Mars Bar, and one banana.
Lee sighed now as he looked at the huge pile of stuff on the floor. He lifted an invisible microphone to his mouth. “Note to self,” he said aloud. “Wear cargo pants with big pockets.” He already had his T-shirt picked out. He would have liked one with a marathon number written across the chest but settled instead for his Theory of Relativity shirt: E=mc squared. Which reminded him! Lee pounced onto his bed and scanned the Einstein quotes scrawled on bits of paper in his messy handwriting. Last week he’d chosen: Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity. (Not that Lee had ever had the pleasure, or even the hope of sitting with a pretty girl—gorgeous Charlotte Bailey, maybe? In your dreams, Lee—but he liked the quote anyway.) The week before that—around the time of a killer math exam, he’d chosen: Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. Of course Lee didn’t believe this of Einstein for a second, but it gave him heart to think that maybe genius didn’t have everything to do with brain cells.
Today Lee stood before his wall of quotes, rubbing his chin: “Lemme see …”—then—“Bingo!” He peeled one of the Albert quotes from the wall, jumped off his bed, and stuck it to the corner of Einstein’s cardboard mouth. He stepped back and read the words: Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands all of a person.
“Mastery.” Lee liked the sound of that word. After repeating it a couple of times, his feet took charge and led him instinctively to the living room, where he paused in front of a framed photograph on the wall. He sighed with awe at the clarity and perfection of the blue marlin breaking the water’s surface with pure grace—the arch of sparkling water droplets dancing over its head, the joyful freedom of the moment caught so expertly by his father’s camera. Lee fingered the first-place ribbon stuck to the picture’s glass. “Mastery,” he whispered. Then he ran back to his room and dove into his closet in search of his cargo pants.
If you wanna catch a big fish, you need maniac desire and a truckload of stubborn determination. You’ll be sitting in your boat with your focused camera glued to your face, waiting for a marlin to come bustin’ out of the water—the sun dancin’ on her slick skin, drops of water flying like diamonds. Can’t even take the time to shoo a skeeter from the end of your nose—sure as shootin’, that’s when she’ll come leapin’ out of the water and you’ve missed her. Come the fourth or fifth hour of waiting, you start to kinda wonder if you’re nuts. You’re not, though, and I’ve got the picture to prove it!
– Frankindaddy McGillicuddy
CHAPTER SEVEN
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
“So what’ll you give me if I do it?” asked Rhonda, snatching the folded note to Lee’s teacher from his hand. Lee pulled the Mars Bar from one of his overstuffed pockets. Rhonda narrowed her eyes. “What are you up to?” she asked, “and what’s that?” She was pointing to the margarine container hanging from his belt on a string.
Lee waved the candy bar in front of her face. “No questions. Either do it or don’t. What’ll it be?” Rhonda shook her head and grabbed the bar from his hand. Lee let the screen door slam and took off down Rhonda’s front steps.
He whistled for Santiago, who leapt over the fence and joined Lee, a frenzied blur of flying slobber, lunatic tail whacking, and over-excited piddling. Santiago always seemed able to sense a good adventure when it was about to happen. “Calm down, girl,” said Lee, struggling to get the leash attached to Santiago’s collar. “You’re going to have to be calm if you expect anyone to believe you’re a real seeing-eye dog; try for a little dignity, cryin’ out loud.” Lee took the white collapsible tent pole from a side pocket and extended it. He put on his dark glasses. Then he tapped his white stick on the pavement in front of him all the way to the bus stop. It was the only way he could think to get Santiago onto a city bus.
When the bus finally arrived and the doors opened, Santiago went berserk with excitement; clearly she didn’t understand the meaning of “dignity.” Lee looked somewhere above the bus driver’s head
and said, “This the number 29?”
The driver stifled a laugh and said, “Get on, kid.”
Lee made an elaborate show of trying to feel his way to the fare box. The bus driver held up a transfer and said, “Need this?”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Lee, making a grab for it, but she wouldn’t let go.
“Caught ya!” she sang.
“Shoot.” Lee took off his glasses. “This mean we have to get off?”
“Sit down, kid. I give you an A-plus for originality. So happens I like a kid with some spunk.” Lee sank into a seat. He supposed he should be thankful. It was the one and only A-plus he’d ever received in his life.
“What’s the mutt’s name?” asked the driver.
“Santiago.”
“Old Man and the Sea?”
Lee’s mouth dropped. “You’re the first person who ever figured that out. How’d you know?”
“Fell in love with Hemingway as a teen,” she said with a wink and a grin. “Where you headed?”
“University.”
“That so?” The bus driver looked hard at Lee, then back at the road. “You one of those child geniuses going for his PhD at the age of eleven?”
“I’m thirteen,” muttered Lee, insulted.
The driver came to a stop and opened the doors. Lee wondered if she was about to tell him to get off. Instead, an old man got on and clomped heavily up the steps.
“Yer six and a half minutes late,” he barked at the driver. The guy was dripping with crankiness—and other things as well. He wiped his drippy nose on the back of his hand. Then he waved a crumpled bus schedule two inches from the driver’s nose. “It says right here in black and white that you were supposed to be here six and a ha—”
He never did finish the sentence. Santiago, who must have smelled the ten-day-old hamburger grease on the guy’s pants leaped up for a harmless sniff. The guy went ballistic. “What the … This here’s public transit, lady,” he yelled at the driver, “and that there’s a mutt, in case you didn’t notice.” He clutched his leg. “Dang ugly thing took a chunk outta my leg …”
Lee was about to defend Santiago—not only was she nowhere near ugly—any old fool could see that—but she wouldn’t bite a flea, even if it was dancing on her butt, that’s how gentle she was. The bus driver saved him the trouble. “Sir!” she said to the geezer, “have you no respect?!”—she pretty much spat the word at him—“The ‘mutt’ to which you refer is a seeing-eye dog,” she said, “and this young man happens to be blind.” Lee slipped his dark glasses back on.
“Not only that,” continued the driver, “but the lad is only ten years of age and already working on a PhD in …” she looked at Lee’s E=mc squared T-shirt, “… in Quantum Physics at the University of Manitoba.” Thirteen! Lee wanted to interject, but resisted. “Now, if you’d move to the back of the bus, I’d be obliged. You’re in the ‘Special Needs’ section and I’m quite sure,”—she eyed the old crankpot icily—“that there is very little special about you, sir.”Lee loved her instantly.
They chatted all the way to the university, while Mr. Crotchety Pants fumed and cussed in the back seat. When Lee rang the bell to get off the bus, the driver said, “What’s your name, kid?”
“Lee,” he said, “Lee Sonny Daddy Beanpole McGillicuddy.”
“It was a pleasure, Beanpole,” she said. Lee turned around on the bottom step. “Hey, what’s yours?”
“Ernestine,” she said, “Ernestine Martha Margaret Mary Heming.”
“The pleasure was all mine, Ernestine,” said Lee. Santiago seconded it.
Lee got out his tent pole and tapped his way down the sidewalk for the benefit of the old grump glaring from the back window of the number 29 bus. As he passed a sunny storefront, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window as if projected onto a movie screen. Oh yeah, Lee often found himself standing on the outside of his life looking in—as if the scenes he saw flashing by made up some low-budget B movie with himself as the main actor. Half the time he wasn’t even sure if he was starring in a tragedy or comedy. He only knew there were days when he could just about hear the stage director’s voice booming from a bullhorn:
LEE’S CRAPPY LIFE: TAKE 334
CAMERA THREE, LET’S GET A CLOSE-UP OF THE KID LOOKING INTO THE STORE WINDOW. SOMEONE MOVE HIS WHITE CANE SO IT’S MORE VISIBLE. AND STOP THE MUTT FROM TAKIN’ A LEAK AGAINST THE BUILDING, FER CRYIN’ OUT …
Lee took a look at his reflection in the store window and shook his head. Comedy. Definitely. Am I loony-toons or what?
A question that sometimes drives me hazy:
am I or are the others crazy?
– Albert Einstein
CAMERAS FADE
AAAAND, CUT!
CHAPTER EIGHT
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
Mark Twain
McGILLICUDDY HOUSE INTERIOR
10:17 AM
ROLL CAMERAS
Gertrude McGillicuddy ran her red lipstick across her mouth, and pressed her lips together in front of the mirror. She was more than satisfied with the way she looked. Not everyone could weigh a hundred and ninety-five pounds and come off looking so … what, regal? impressive? elegantly monumental? All of the above, decided Gertrude, who considered herself a white Queen Latifah, of sorts. She sucked in her tummy and admired her reflection. Gertie knew she could have been a star if she’d wanted. Fact is, she was a star, in a way.
She tied her red neckerchief in a knot, donned her cowboy hat, and left the house. It wasn’t her day to work at the Country and Western Club, but she was headed in that direction anyway.
“Hey!” she hollered as she burst through the front doors, letting a shaft of sunlight sneak into the dimly lit bar. She stood in the doorway, grandly silhouetted for a second. Gertrude was partial to big entrances.
Voices came at her from every direction, rising above the twangy strains of country and western pouring from the jukebox.
“Hey, Gertie!”
“Good to see you, Gert!”
“Thought it was your day off, Trude!” (Gertrude had almost as many names as her son.)
“Does a gal have to be working to enjoy the company of her friends?” she said. Gertrude playfully tipped a cowboy’s hat over his eyes as she passed by, swiped someone else’s beer bottle and pretended to guzzle it, handing it back with a belch that had them wondering if the bottle really was empty. Someone affectionately threw a balled-up napkin at her, and she took the smiling culprit by the collar and faked a punch to his gut. Everybody laughed. Although it was her job to play the heavy and keep peace in the club when things got a little too rowdy, and even though it had been necessary over the years to show more than a few people the door, that didn’t stop them from loving Gert. Everyone did. That’s just the way it was.
“Joe!” she said, walking over to the bar. No matter how many years she’d worked there, Gertrude never tired of the sound of peanut shells crunching between her cowboy boots and the hardwood floor. “How’s it going, my friend?” she said.
The bartender smiled back. “You first,” he said. “How’s life treating you, Gert?” Joe knew that when Gertrude came to sit at his bar on her day off, it usually meant she had something on her mind. Listening was as much a part of his job as pouring drinks.
“The usual?” he asked.
Gertrude nodded. “Better make ’er a double.”
“One double swamp water comin’ up,” he said, lifting a glass first to the Coke fountain, then the Seven Up, then the Orange Crush. Gertrude didn’t drink alcohol, but she was a woman who fiercely enjoyed her swamp water.
“A double, eh?” said Joe, taking a closer look at her. “What’s up?”
Gertrude looked back at him, silent for a second, then she spoke. “Joe, you have a boy or two at home, right?”
“Four,” said Joe.
“Any of them youn
g teenagers?”
“Yep.”
Gertrude took a slug of her soda. “Any of them give you trouble?”
“Gertie, I’ll ask you again,” said Joe, with a patient smile. “What’s up?”
Gertrude sighed. “Paid a visit to the school earlier. Lee forgot his lunch so I dropped it off for him.” She looked up at Joe. “He wasn’t there.”
“Hmm,” said Joe.
“Forged my name on a sick note,” she said.
“Oooh, boy,” cringed Joe.
“I don’t know, Joe,” said Gertrude. She took a peanut from a basket, cracked it, and tossed the empty shell onto the floor (shell-tossing was compulsory at the Country and Western). “He’s a good kid. A really good kid, but sometimes I worry about him. He seems happy enough most of the time, I suppose, but he hangs around by himself too much. Boy of his age should be out with his buddies. I’d almost be happy if I thought he’d skipped school today if it was to be with some other flesh-and-blood kids. It’d make a nice change from hangin’ with his dead buddies all the time.”
Joe furrowed his brows at Gertrude. “Come again?”
Gertrude smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s just that he’s constantly memorizing quotes from people long dead and gone.” Gertrude took a slug of swamp water, leaving a red lipstick kiss on the rim of her glass. “Mind, I suppose he does come up with some wise sayings, but it’s unnatural for a kid his age, you ask me.”
“Does Lee have any other hobbies to keep himself occupied?” asked Joe.
“That’s the problem,” she sighed.
CUT TO UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA CAMPUS
9:18 AM
The McGillicuddy Book of Personal Records Page 4