Sticks and Stones - Lynn Hall (smarten punctuation)

by Lynn Hall

  His stomach was beginning to feel unsettled. Nothing drastic yet. Nothing was going to come up, but it was churning. He welcomed the discomfort. When he thought about going to school in the morning, explaining to his afternoon teachers why he had disappeared today, seeing Mr. McNamar and having to meet his eyes, forcing himself to enter classrooms filled with people who would look up at him and think “Here comes the queer,” when he tried to comprehend the next six months, something collapsed inside him and he yearned to be sick enough never to have to go back.

  Two men stood in the semidarkness of the principal’s office. They stood at opposite ends of the radiator, looking not at each other but out through the Venetian blinds toward the baseball diamond. It was five o’clock. The streetlights had just come on in response to the deepening winter dusk.

  Gerald Knapp became aware that the sole of his foot, resting on the radiator’s ridges, was uncomfortably hot. But he left it where it was. The small pain lent itself to the larger pain of anger and frustration that pressed inside his narrow chest.

  “I can understand your position, I suppose,” he said grudgingly. “But blast it, Mac, Tom is the best musician I’ve ever got my hands on, and I hate like the devil to lose him. The boy is talented! He’s not one of these kids who’re just taking music to please their parents, or for the social side of it. Tom is a musician all the way through.”

  Mr. McNamar said wryly, “Yes, but unfortunately that’s not all he is.”

  “But how do you know? These stories can get started on just a little bit of nothing, you know that as well as I do, Mac. Did you ever stop to think what you—and everybody else—might be doing to Tom if it’s not true?”

  McNamar sighed and began snapping the Venetian blind cord between his hands. “No, it’s true, and I’m not just going by what people are saying, although that’s not to be discounted. No, Tom was involved in a little incident in the P.E. locker room a while back, and I personally saw him in a public place, embracing a young man who’s a known homosexual. Now that doesn’t leave much room for doubt in my mind.”

  After a long troubled silence Mr. Knapp said, “Mac, I don’t care. I don’t give a diddly-darn about the boy’s private life. All I know is that he won the right to go to finals; in fact, he’s the best hope we’ve had for winning the thing in all the years I’ve been here, and it just kills me to see him lose the chance over something as silly as this.”

  “But it’s not silly. Not from Mrs. Andersen’s point of view, and I can’t say I really blame her. If Al were my son, I’d have misgivings about him going off on a trip and sharing a hotel room with a—deviate. You know teenage boys well enough to know how an incident at that age can affect—”

  “Oh, goose-grease, Mac. You’d think Tom was some kind of a contagious disease.”

  The principal turned away from the window. “He may very well be just that. I’m sorry, Gerald. I can see your side of it, too, and I wish there were some other way, but there isn’t.”

  “Why doesn’t Mrs. Andersen keep Al home, and let Tom go?”

  “I suggested that. She refused. Said Al hadn’t done anything wrong and why should he be punished. You have to admit she’s got a point.”

  Gerald Knapp lowered his foot from the radiator and reached for his coat. There was no use arguing further. He had known all along that it was useless to try to change Mac’s mind. McNamar prided himself on being a pal to the faculty members, but he also prided himself on never allowing any teacher to talk him into altering a decision once it was made.

  Mr. Knapp said good-night to McNamar and walked the three blocks to his house, scarcely noticing the cold that blew through his unbuttoned coat.

  He was replaying McNamar’s accusations of Tom. Incident in the locker room. Embracing in a public place. Until now he had discounted the vague giggling rumors that had reached him about Tom Naylor’s friendship with the Alexander boy. Gerald Knapp had always enjoyed thinking of himself as much more liberal, in his quiet way, than most of Great River, and now his liberal attitudes were being tested. In the light of this new knowledge about Tom, he weighed his own feelings about the boy and decided, with a small glow of pleasure, that it made no difference to him whether Tom’s private life was normal or not.

  It doesn’t matter to me, he affirmed, and it shouldn’t matter to anyone else, either. That Chopin medley was pure gold, the way it came out of Tom’s fingers, and it’s a darned shame this other thing had to come along and spoil his chances in the finals.

  Clearly he saw the thin, dark-suited figure sitting straight and supple at the piano, far back from the keyboard because of his long arms and legs. He saw the back of Tom’s neck, youthful and bony, and those long talented hands.

  He felt a sudden strong desire to help Tom, and yet he knew he would not be able to. He had not been able to make himself into a first-rate musician, or even a first-rate music instructor. It was painfully clear to him now that he would be able to do nothing to help Tom Naylor.

  For the next two weeks Tom was, indeed, sick enough to stay home. “Just the flu,” Charlotte explained when she called the school, “but it’s really hit him. Too bad, too, right now at Christmastime, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

  He stayed in bed, ate little, didn’t keep all of what he did eat down, and slept a great deal of the time. He didn’t know, himself, whether the illness was genuine or whether it was the result of his stirred-up emotions, and he didn’t much care. It was a blessing, a stall for time until he was able to face school.

  But it was a mixed blessing. In spite of the television at the foot of the bed and the books on the mantle above him, in spite of Charlotte’s cheerful company and Ward’s visits every afternoon, Tom was left with too much time to think. Over and over his mind played back Mr. McNamar’s words, until finally one sentence out-shouted all the rest.

  “… it’s been my experience that where there is this much talk there’s usually at least some element of truth in it.”

  Some element of truth.

  The music contest was no longer the important thing. The fact that people were talking about him was no longer the worst of it. The worst was that one sentence of Mr. McNamar’s. The element of truth.

  Of course there’s nothing wrong with me, he scoffed to himself over and over. If there was, I’d have known about it before now.

  Maybe, maybe not, his mind argued. You’ve never even taken a girl out, except in a group. How do you know what you would have done?

  I’ve thought about girls as much as anybody, though. I asked Karen for a date. It isn’t my fault I haven’t started dating yet.

  Yes, but—be honest now—when you picked Karen out, was it because she made you feel sexy or because she has a good mind and she’s interested in music?

  Oh, shut up. There is nothing wrong with me. I am perfectly normal.

  Tom was still in bed when Christmas arrived, so Charlotte set up their green aluminum tree in his room, and on Christmas Eve they opened their gifts there. Harv Werle and Ward came, and Charlotte made her own special eggnog and fruitcake. She had done all of Tom’s Christmas shopping for him, except for her own gift. Ward had bought that; he even picked it out. Tom had given him the money and said, “Just get whatever you think she’ll like.”

  He had thought for a long time about what to give Ward. The knowledge they shared of what had happened at school was tightening the web of their closeness, so that Tom now felt as though Ward were the most important person in his life. Charlotte had Harv; his dad had a new bride; the rest of Buck Creek and Great River had each other and considered him a dangerous freak. That left only Ward, who knew the worst and was still his friend. It called for a special, personal, perfect gift, but he hadn’t been able to think of anything special, personal, and perfect, so he went along with his mother’s suggestion of an unabridged thesaurus, and let her buy it and wrap it.

  It wasn’t the best Christmas he had ever had; in fact, it was probably the worst except for the on
e when his parents were going through the most painful part of their separation. Still, it was a pleasant enough evening. The four of them played bridge after the brief opening of gifts, and then Charlotte and Harv left to go to a party at Harv’s brother’s in Elkader.

  When they were gone, Ward went down to the Jeep and came back with a small package, which he tossed onto Tom’s bed.

  “I thought I’d wait till they were gone to give you this.”

  Tom looked up at him, puzzled. ‘‘You already gave me the vest.”

  “I know it. Open it.”

  It was a small Oriental-looking book of poems.

  ‘‘They’re haiku,” Ward explained. “We had to write a lot of haiku when I was in college, because it’s such good training for a writer. It’s the best discipline there is; the whole poem has to be just seventeen syllables. I wrote one of my favorites in the front.”

  Tom opened the little book. In Ward’s straight up-and-down handwriting on the flyleaf was:

  Need we speak at all?

  The wind will bear our thoughts as

  Seeds on maple wings.

  It was signed ‘‘Love, Ward.” For an instant the signature brought a flush of embarrassment to Tom’s face, but when it subsided, he felt good, warm, cared-about.

  Ward lounged on the floor beside the bed, leafing through the thesaurus. “You couldn’t have given me anything I wanted more,” he said. “My folks, my sisters, they give me socks. Or neckties. Very original. That sounds ungrateful I suppose, but it just goes to show, they don’t stop to think about me. They just go to the handiest store and buy anything, just so they’ve done their duty and given me a present.”

  “You really don’t have much in common with the rest of your family, do you.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Ward snorted. “You might say that. They think anybody who doesn’t want to farm is crazy. Of course my brothers thought it was great that all I wanted out of the place was the schoolhouse. That means fewer slices into the pie when Dad retires.”

  “They seem nice, though,” Tom ventured, “at least what little I’ve seen of them. Your folks.”

  “Oh, sure, they’re nice. They’re good people. Pillars of the community, active in the church, put three sons through college and all that. I suppose I love them, even. It’s just that we’re not the same kind of people. They can’t figure me out. Like tonight. We had kind of a family argument—me against them. All the aunts and uncles and those God-awful cousins are sitting around my folks’ house having their little gift exchange and comparing notes on how all of us kids first found out there wasn’t any Santa Claus. They think it’s terrible that I’d rather be down here than home with The Family.”

  “I know what you mean,” Tom said quietly.

  “Oh, well, you don’t really need them for anything now. You’re out on your own, and pretty soon you’re going to be a famous author, and nothing else should matter.”

  Ward gave Tom a long look, then smiled. “You can be my family, okay?”

  “You bet.”

  After Ward left, Tom turned on the lamp over his bed and slowly read through the entire book of haiku.

  15

  “It’s good to have you back, Tom.” Miss Hershaw smiled at him as he came into the room. “Wait after class and I’ll give you your makeup assignments. You didn’t miss too much.”

  Tom nodded and made his way across the front of the classroom, down the last aisle to the third seat. The class was already in progress, so every pair of eyes in the room followed him, peeled off the flimsy layers of his privacy, saw the core of womanness under his masculine disguise.

  Crazy, crazy, crazy. It isn’t true, he shouted silently. Nothing is any different from the way it was the last time I was in this class. Except that now I know what they’re thinking. And I can’t stand it.

  He realized Miss Hershaw was talking as she wrote on the blackboard, “Man is struck by car while fleeing burning building.” Tom forced his mind to follow what she was saying.

  “… straight news story about this situation in two-hundred words or less. Then I want you to write the same story but from a human interest angle, five-hundred words. Now, you’re working on a real newspaper and you have a deadline. Both stories have to be ready by the end of this class. Get at it.”

  Forty-five minutes. Tom found himself watching the hands jump around the face of the clock in one-minute spasms. He tried to focus on what had to be done, but it seemed so silly to be sitting here writing fake news stories when he was rotting from the inside out.

  He mused; a man struck by a car while fleeing … How do they know he was a man? You can’t always tell by appearances, you know. What was he doing inside that burning building? Something shameful, or he wouldn’t be fleeing from it. Seducing little boys maybe, or … No. Have to write these news stories. Man struck by car … Only thirty minutes. I can’t do it.

  When the bell rang, the rest of the class dropped their papers on Miss Hershaw’s desk as they filed out. Tom lolled against the blackboard until they were gone, separating the gray and white layers of the blackboard eraser with his thumbnail. Suddenly he realized that his nails were a little long, about an eighth of an inch beyond the skin line. His imagination filed them into smooth ovals and applied clear nail polish. His shoulders hunched in an involuntary shudder. Quickly he peeled off the excess thumbnail down to the quick.

  Miss Hershaw turned to him. “Well, Tom? No paper to hand in?”

  “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t seem to concentrate. Could I do it in study hall and bring it in after school?”

  She frowned. ‘‘If you were working on a newspaper and it were going to press in forty-five minutes, you couldn’t very well hand in your story six hours later, could you? The whole point of this assignment was to get you used to working under time pressure.”

  “But I’m not ever going to work on a newspaper.” He hadn’t meant to say that at all, and he certainly hadn’t meant to speak so loudly. He waited, dismayed.

  But Miss Hershaw just looked puzzled. “Tom, are you feeling okay? Are you sure you’re over your flu? You’re not usually like this.”

  He flushed. “I’m okay. I didn’t mean to say that, and I’m sorry about the assignment. I just couldn’t concentrate.”

  She considered him for a moment, then gave him a quick pat on the arm. “Okay, this time. Just don’t ever go to work on a newspaper, huh? You can bring in your stories after school. Now, for your makeup work, read Chapters Six through Ten and do the quizzes at the end. Try to get them in some time this week, okay?”

  As he left the room, his breath escaped in a long, deep blow of relief. Already the bell was ringing for the next class. He bolted up the stairway three steps at a time, but even so everyone in his second-hour class was already seated. They watched him cross the room, watched him with their cool deep-seeing eyes.

  The day did not improve. An absence of two and a half weeks, even though it included four days of Christmas vacation, made a mountain of homework assignments that seemed impossible to Tom in his distraction. In the study hall after lunch he tried again to write the news stories, but again his mind spent the entire period slipping from side to side around the point of concentration. Floyd Schleffe sat two rows over from him, and Tom kept imagining what Floyd was thinking about him. Now that he understood Floyd’s arrogance, he found he could not meet Floyd’s eyes. The humility of his position infuriated him.

  When the dragging procession of classes was finally over, he headed straight home, straight to his piano. The music for the Chopin medley was still standing open on the rack where he had left it the night before his talk with Mr. McNamar. At first his fingers were awkward, but after a few trial passages the surging rhythm swept him up and began the healing process.

  As his hands moved through the Cantabile of Fantaisie-Impromptu, Charlotte began singing “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” from the kitchen.

  He felt irritated, intruded upon. The music was his
escape, and she had no right to be hearing it. Ward wouldn’t sing along, he thought, pouting.

  But then another thought came and made him welcome the irritation he felt toward Charlotte. I get mad at her sometimes. One point in my favor. I’m not a mama’s boy, and that’s supposed to be a sign. If Floyd Schleffe thinks I’m queer because I’m too attached to my mother, I’ll just tell him how mad I get at her when she messes up my beautiful music. My beautiful music. My God, that sounds sissy.

  His hands slowed and stumbled to a stop. For a long dizzy moment he sat staring down at his hands on the keyboard. His wrists were at their usual playing angle, his long bony fingers splayed out over the chords. As he stared down at them, the angle of his wrists became hideously delicate; his little fingers arched up into a teacup curve.

  Damn. I’m going nuts. He slammed the cover down over the keys and got up so fast he cracked his legs against the underside of the keyboard.

  After supper Harv Werle appeared with his cribbage board under his arm. He greeted Tom with his usual joviality, then led Charlotte into the living room for a cribbage lesson. Tom stood in the doorway watching them.

  Why don’t I like that man? he wondered. He’s never been anything but friendly to me. It can’t be just the hair on his hands. That’s stupid. Is it because he’s so virile-looking? Am I jealous of him and Mom? God. Here I go again.

  He needed to get out of the house, away from Charlotte and Harv. And yet, for once he was not drawn toward Sweet Ridge and Ward.

  He drove the bus up through Buck Creek and along the Great River road, waiting for something to tell him what it was that he felt like doing. His habits and accustomed patterns were strangling him tonight, and he felt a need to do something that was part of his old painless life. He needed the kind of evening he used to have in Wheaton.

  When he came to corners, he allowed the bus to turn in whichever direction it seemed to go. It took him to the Dairy Queen and parked itself in the graveled area next to the building. Through the large windows cluttered with price lists and malt advertisements, he could see three booths full of familiar people. Karen was in there, and Meredith and Robert and his date, and several other seniors. From what Tom could see of their faces, around the signs on the window, it was obvious they were having a wonderful, loud, silly time.