I’m supposed to conference at one o’clock with that girl Penny Ledbetter. I call her room and catch her just as she’s leaving and tell her not to come to my office, to meet me in a booth in the Pow-Wow Room at the student center. I put a note on my office door canceling my other conferences.
Just before she arrives I change her grade from a B+ to an A-, what the hell.
When I give her the paper she asks about the minus.
“I don’t know. Listen. I got fired.”
“Wow. What for?”
I tell her about it.
When I’m through she sits there shaking her head at me. “Hate to say it, sir, but your boss is right.”
“Well, thanks. I appreciate your support.”
“You shoulda moved on it right away. Something like that? God. I mean, just think, sir, how you’d feel if—”
“I know, I know,” I tell her, pressing my face into my hands.
“Still kind of shitty though, losing your job and all. You were doing pretty good.”
I come out from my hands and give my eyes a flick. “You think so?”
“After you quit pacing around so much.”
“Right. Thanks for the tip, by the way.”
“No problem. Well, I’d better be—”
“Anything else?” I ask.
“Sir?”
“About how I did. Just wondering.”
“Well …”
“Was I funny? At all? You think?”
“Not at all, sir.”
“I mean when I wanted to be. Couple times there I said some rather … witty things, I thought.”
“I wasn’t always paying attention. Listen, I’m gonna go now, so—”
“Well, wait. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
“No, thank you, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’ anymore, Penny.”
“That’s all right, sir.” She gets up.
“What’s your hurry?”
“No hurry.”
“So what’s the problem?”
She shrugs. “I guess I just don’t like you very much, sir.”
“You don’t?”
“But I hope things work out for you. I really do. So long, sir.” She walks away.
I sit there, staring after her.
“Excuse me, you through with the cup?”
“What?”
“You through with the cup?” a busboy asks.
“Yeah. Take it.”
He drops it in his garbage can.
“Nice hat,” I tell him.
Security Guard
ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO 1973
I’m in the Impressionist wing today, with Frank. Frank’s an old ex-wino who likes working here. He strolls up to people in front of a painting, stands next to them with his hands behind his back and reveals some little-known fact about the artist. I don’t know where he gets his information. This morning I heard him telling a man that Toulouse Lautrec was afraid of dogs: “Being such a little fella, y’see.” The man nodded and walked away.
We wear a burgundy jacket with an Art Institute patch on the breast pocket, white shirt, gray tie, gray pants, black shoes, and walk around, and around, and around.
Occasionally someone will come up and ask me something, usually directions. I’m always a lot more obliging than they want me to be. I can’t help it. I’m so glad to be doing something. Often I’ll even take the person where he’s going. He clearly doesn’t want me to but I don’t care. And if I work here another three months I know I’m going to begin sidling up to people and telling them Picasso never liked to wear hats, or Cezanne’s great-grandson invented the electric can-opener.
I used to enjoy coming here, as a civilian. The galleries I’m working today were among my favorites. But not any more. I can’t see any more. I stand in front of a painting and look and look and it’s no use. Gallery white-out, it’s called.
This morning I’m standing in front of Van Gogh’s The Bedroom, staring hard. I know for a fact I used to like this painting a lot. There was something it did to me. Gave me some kind of feeling. Damned if I can remember.
“Excuse me, where’s the men’s room?”
“C’mon, I’ll show ya.”
Sometimes Frank will stroll on over for a visit, hands behind his back: “AH quiet on the western front?”
“So far,” I answer.
“That’s good. No news is good news.”
“There ya go.”
He sighs. “I sure as hell wish they would issue us firearms.”
He complains about this a lot.
“You put your life on the line and they don’t even give you the means to defend yourself?” he says, and shakes his head. “It’s just not right.”
“Nope,” I say.
“See that old witch over there by the Renoir?”
“Yeah?”
“Wanted to know why all these paintings are so blurry. Were the artists all nearsighted? So I says to her, ‘Ma’am, that’s the way they painted. They wanted it to look like like that. It’s called Impressionism, ma’am.’ She says, ‘Well, Ym not impressed.’ And you know what she does? You ready for this?”
“Ready.”
“She reaches into her purse.”
“Huh.”
“Right away I’m thinking, Gun, right?”
“Right.”
“I’m thinking, ‘This woman’s gonna shoot me dead and there ain’t a goddam thing I can do about it.’ See what I’m saying?”
“Yep.”
“It just ain’t right.”
“Nope.”
We stand there.
“So. Did she?” I ask.
“Did she what.”
“Pull out a gun.”
“Handkerchief. But what about next time?”
“Exactly.”
He sighs, “Oh, well.”
I nod.
He grabs my arm: “Hey. If we’re so smart, how come we ain’t rich?”
“There ya go.”
“Catch ya later, partner,” he tells me, strolling off, hands behind his back.
Giving us guns would be a bad idea.
For example, this guy this morning comes walking by in his beard and tweed jacket, looking at me, holding up his wrist and tapping it. Couldn’t say, “What time is it?” That would be showing too much respect.
But what’s worse, I immediately push up my sleeve and tell him, “It’s just about twenty-three—make that twenty-four—minutes after nine.”
He doesn’t say thanks or even give a nod but just turns and stands with his back to me in front of Cassatt’s The Child’s Bath.
And you see, at that point I might have pulled out my gun and splashed his brains all over a priceless work of art. A woman of course is worse, especially if she thinks I’ve been following her around, admiring this or that about her. Then if I come up and stand beside her in front of, say, Seurat’s Sunday on La Grande Jatte and mention the Pointillist movement, you know what I get? A sigh. Meaning, Please. You’re a security guard. Do you really expect me to talk to you?
And see, there again, if I had a gun? Who knows?
Anyway, Christ, what a long day.
I’ll tell you what helps a lot though: a good solid daydream. I’ve just a started a new one today.
I play second base for the Tokyo Giants, one of the few Americans in the league. I’m quite popular but I’m a very private person. In fact, during the off-season I live in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Kyoto. As it happens, the abbot there has a brother who’s an excellent chef and a big Giants fan and he’d be thrilled to meet me. So it gets arranged and I go to his house for a wonderful shoes-off Japanese dinner—no sushi though. Turns out, the man has a daughter. Her name is Shuko, and oh my God is she gorgeous, just an unbelievably beautiful young woman who, like her father, is also a big Giants fan, so of course this is quite a thrill for her as well—although it’s hard to tell, she’s so darned quiet and shy.
So there’s the set-u
p. Then it’s just a matter of playing it out very slowly, through many details. By lunchtime today Shuko and I haven’t even kissed yet, so that’s good. There’s a downside to daydreaming, though. And that has to do with trying to stop.
If it’s a really good one, I’m still at it on the bus ride home and even after I arrive. I’m ashamed to say this, but I sometimes actually spend the evening walking slowly around the apartment, hands behind my back.
Now and then I’ll suddenly notice myself and stop in my tracks, aware that I should be doing something better with my life, something more meaningful. But nothing in particular occurs to me. And I walk around some more.
VISTA Volunteer
SOUTH SIDE SETTLEMENT HOUSE, COLUMBUS, OHIO 1974
There’s this remarkable little kid in my reading-writing group. His name is Darryl Potter. He’s seven, he’s black, and I swear if he works really hard he could be another Henry Aaron. I mean it. You should see this kid hit.
He bats righthanded but I’m trying to turn him into a switch-hitter. He’s a little resistant, though. I keep explaining the advantage it will give him later on, but he doesn’t care about later on, he just wants to have fun. I’m trying to break that attitude, but he’s very stubborn. He also has a little temper. When he gets mad he calls me a butthead. Otherwise he addresses me as Mister Butthead.
In our staff meeting this morning this girl Peggy asked me about that, about Darryl calling me Mister Butthead.
I explained that a couple weeks ago he started calling me a butthead—just trying out a funny new insult—and I said to him, making light of it, “That’s Mister Butthead to you.” And he took me seriously.
Joel removed his unlit pipe from his mouth. “It’s clear the boy doesn’t intend any real disrespect. In fact, it may even be a term of genuine affection. Still, he is calling you a butthead, ‘Mister’ or otherwise.”
Sarah wanted to know what exactly is a butthead, anyway. “I mean, what are you saying about a person when you call him that?”
“Well, anatomically speaking,” Eric said, “if you have a butt for a head, you obviously don’t have a whole lot of brains. In fact you’d have, well, let’s face it, shit for brains.”
Stan wasn’t sure he agreed. He felt the term had less to do with being stupid than with being foolish.
Jeremy said it meant both: “When you call someone a butthead you’re saying the person is basically a stupid fool.”
Everyone looked over at me, I guess to see how it fit.
I played with my pen.
Miriam finally spoke. She’s the executive director here, a handsome black woman in her fifties with beautiful hands and this elegant serenity that bugs me a little. She said the question is simply this: by allowing Darryl to call me a butthead, what kind of message are we sending him and the other children?
So that went around the table for a while.
Conclusion: a bad message.
We moved on to a discussion of upcoming Black Awareness Week.
This afternoon I take Darryl aside after our reading-writing group and squat down on my haunches, put my hands on his shoulders, look him in the eye and tell him, “I don’t want you to call me Mister Butthead anymore, Darryl. All right?”
“Why not?”
“Because it sends a message that you think I’m a stupid fool. Is that the message you want to send?”
He nods.
“But what if it hurts my feelings, Darryl?”
He shrugs.
“All right, look. Just don’t use it in front of any grownups, okay?”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes me look bad, letting a kid call me a butthead.”
“Mister Butthead.”
“Right. Tell you what. Let’s make it simple. Don’t call me a butthead or Mister Butthead any more—anywhere, anytime. Otherwise, you and I are all through hitting baseballs.” I don’t mean it, but how is he to know? “All right? Clear enough?”
Tears appear in his big brown eyes.
So I tell him I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, he can call me anything he likes, and give him a hug.
He locks his arms around my neck.
“Still buddies,” I tell him, “right?”
“Would you pitch to me?”
“Not right now. A little later.”
“No. Now.”
“Darryl…”
“Please, Mister Butthead?”
“You’re choking me.”
“Please?”
“Let go, Darryl. I can’t breathe.
“Will you pitch to me?”
“Darryl …”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
“Yes!”
He lets go.
Powerful little arms on him.
We’ve got a large plastic bucket full of rubber balls and a nice little twenty-eight-inch Louisville Slugger. That’s what started it all, when I found the bucket and bat in a closet in the gym. I was with Darryl looking for some stupid action-figure he’d lost. He was all upset about it, so I said let’s go hit some balls and we went out behind the Settlement House where I scratched in his strike zone with a stone against the brick wall and started lobbing pitches to him, underhand. He was terrible, missing the ball by a foot. That was a month ago. Now I’m standing forty-five measured feet away, throwing overhand, hard, and he’s belting them one after another. The kid’s amazing.
Today though, he seems a little unfocused, falling back into some bad habits.
“Darryl, what’d I tell you about your front shoulder?”
“Throw.”
“First answer my question.”
“What.”
“Your front shoulder. Where are you supposed to keep it?”
“Pointed at you.”
“All right, then.”
I throw … and duck just in time.
“Attaboy,” I tell him. “Take my head off.”
“Your butthead.”
“Okay. Now I want you to switch,” meaning I want him to bat lefthanded for a while.
“I don’t wanna” he says.
“Don’t give me a hard time. Let’s go. Other side.”
“Why can’t I just do it this way?”
“I already told you, Darryl. I already explained. Against a right-handed pitcher a lefthanded batter has a much better chance than a righthanded batter, and against a lefthanded pitcher a righthanded batter—are you listening?”
“Uh-huh.”
“The point is, the batter who can hit both ways always has a much better chance. And that’s what you’re gonna have, Darryl.”
“Can’t I just—”
“Listen. Someday you’ll thank me. When that pro scout comes walking up after your high school game and says, ‘Darryl, would you please sign your name on this contract?’—you’re gonna say to yourself, ‘Thank you, Mister Butthead, thank you.’ I only wish someone made me bat from both sides, Darryl.”
I might not be here throwing rubber balls to a seven year old.
“I don’t wanna do lefty,” he says.
“Okay. Well, I guess we’re all through here. Help me round up the balls.”
“I’ll do lefty.”
“Attaboy.”
Monday’s the beginning of Black Awareness Week. On Friday each of the Settlement House groups will give a little presentation on the gymnasium stage for members of the community. I’ve got the kids in my reading-writing group doing historical figures. Latisha’s going to be George Washington Carver; Allen will be Frederick Douglas; Gregory is W.E.B. Dubois; Jonella is Harriet Tubman; Erica is Rosa Parks; James is Martin Luther King; and I want Darryl to be Jackie Robinson, but he’s giving me trouble. He wants to be King.
I tell him after class he can’t be King because James is going to be King.”
“You said we could choose.”
“I know but you can’t both be King.”
“Let James be Jackie Robinson. He don’t even car
e. He tole me.”
“Darryl, I’m really surprised. I thought you’d wanna be Jackie Robinson. You know, if it wasn’t for him—”
“I wanna be King.”
“Well, you can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Then I don’t wanna be in it.”
I shrug. “That’s up to you.”
“You’re a ugly butthead.”
I sadly shake my head. “And you want to be Martin Luther King?”
“You’re Martin Luther Butthead!” he yells, and runs crying from the room.
Next morning Miriam wants to see me in her office. She’s just had a long conversation over the phone with Darryl’s grandmother.
“Why won’t you let Darryl be Martin Luther King?”
She’s sitting behind her desk with this intense calmness, or this calm intensity. She offered me a chair but I said my back’s bothering me. I want the height advantage.
“James Davenport is doing King,” I explain.
“According to Darryl, James doesn’t care who he plays. So why not—”
“I just think Jackie Robinson would make an excellent role model for Darryl, that’s all.”
“Whereas King wouldn’t?”
“Jackie Robinson would be more appropriate.”
“Because?”
“Okay. You’re aware that I’ve been pitching to Darryl in back of the building, right?”
“Yes, and I think it’s wonderful.”
“I have never seen a kid his age swing a bat the way he does. And he learned it like that,” snapping my fingers. “He couldn’t even make contact with the ball a month ago and now he’s like a—like a machine.”
“A machine.”
“No. Look. He begs me to pitch to him. You should come watch. That’s a very happy kid out there. And I’m tellin’ ya, he’s a natural.”
“Now, that word makes me very nervous.”
“All I’m saying is, the kid was born with a gift, with tremendous hitting instinct.”
“Instinct. I see.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“Do you?”
“Instinct versus intelligence, all that. But hey, Jackie Robinson was a very intelligent man. And what better role model for a kid who wants to be a ballplayer, you know?”
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