by Phoebe Stone
I am not listening anymore. This night belongs to somebody else. It isn’t our night. We came here thinking it was going to be our night and suddenly we’re outsiders, strangers looking in at something through glass, something we have no part of. We are only here to make the winner feel more important. Suddenly we’re just a group of strangers standing on the sidelines.
After the ceremony, they serve refreshments: cider, sweet tea, cookies, and doughnuts. Melinda is hovering near the cider dispenser pretending to look at a flyer somebody was handing out earlier, advertising timeshare condos in the Bahamas. I know time-share condos are about the last thing in the world my older sister is interested in, and sure enough, it happens. She bursts into tears. Mama leads her out the door and waves to Granddaddy and me to follow.
Stacey Pratt took the win. Right now she’s getting photographed by the Shenandoah Valley Newspaper and the Charlottesville Gazette. There are about five cameras flashing on her. When you win something, everybody wants to take a big bite out of you and carry it away. They’re chewing Stacey Pratt to bits, as far as I can see.
Granddaddy takes my hand and we push through the crowd. Quentin Duster cuts in front of us as we’re going out the door. He knocks right into me, and his cider goes flying off down into the hay and mud on the ground in front of the pavilion. Typical Quentin. I roll my eyes and look away, not wanting to talk to anybody right now.
Granddaddy and I don’t go on any of the rides. We even pass up the bumper cars and we walk right by the hypnotist tent, listening to the crowd inside swooning. We don’t look at the scrubbed-up clean blue-ribbon Jersey cows. We don’t go to see Quentin Duster’s little brother’s prizewinning black goat. All of us just stand in the rain under two umbrellas waiting for our ride. (The third umbrella got away from us back along the river where we were stuck, and I bet it’s ripped to shreds by now.) Frank Bailey’s brother-in-law is leaving early and he’s going to give us a lift home.
As we stand here, Melinda is crying, leaning against Mama like a tree leans against a house in the wind. “Go figure,” says Mama. “Stacey Pratt isn’t even pretty.”
“Confidence is everything,” says Granddaddy. “If you’re sure of yourself, everybody’s snowed by your sureness. Just like Big Box Home and Hardware. They come in with all this confidence and bunch of shiny junk, making them the winners right now, but they’re the losers in my opinion. LOSERS,” shouts Granddaddy.
“Granddaddy,” says Mama, “if you raise your voice one more time, I’m going to haul off and swat you.”
Mama puts her arm over Melinda’s shoulder. “Honey,” she says, “I know it’s hard to lose. It’s easier to win. But people don’t realize that it’s the ones who lose that really win in the end, because they have to build themselves back up, brick by brick. They have to put themselves back together after they lose. And that makes a person strong, Melinda. STRONG. And then when you run into big windstorms and terrible hurricanes, you’re going to be so strong, nothing is going to pull you down. That’s better than winning a beauty contest, isn’t it, Granddaddy?”
“Honey, we know you’re the prettiest. Who cares what a bunch of LOSERS think anyway?” says Granddaddy.
I look at my sister, Melinda, with tears running down her face, mud and rain all over her pink delicate skirt. For once her curls have fallen out and her damp hair lies dark and sad on her shoulders. But it’s her salmon-colored dyed shoes that tear right at my heart. They’re all covered with water stains as she stands in the hay and mud right now. They’re ruined, as far as I can see. In fact, suddenly Melinda and I have a lot in common. It seems as if we are both struggling in a world that hardly has room for us. Or if there is any room, it looks like it’s going to have to be fought for.
When we get home and I’m lying in my bed, I notice the sky has cleared. The rain has finally stopped and everything is still and dark. I can hear the spring peepers in the swamp singing their hearts out, all those little unknown voices calling to someone, asking to be heard. Because we didn’t win, there is a sadness covering me like one of my old wool blankets from my head to my toes. Even so, a feeling keeps surfacing in me, remembering how that audience clapped after Melinda read my poem. Even though she said it was her poem and they didn’t know it was my poem, still it felt good to hear them clapping, knowing they had liked those words that I wrote, that they had listened to what was in my heart and they had liked it. I pull my curtains aside so I can see the black clean sky and I finally fall asleep, listening to all those spring peepers calling and calling and calling.
Come to find out in the morning, my whole world falls apart. Quentin Duster gets on the school bus with his little brother and Conrad isn’t with them. At first it doesn’t register. I feel confused, cloudy. Did Conrad get on ahead of Quentin? Did I miss something?
Quentin plunges down next to me with all manner of lunch boxes and book bags, plastic dinosaurs falling all over the floor and on the seat between us. Quentin’s breathing heavy and fast. “I tried to tell you,” he says to me. “I tried to tell you last night, but you just pushed on by, knocked the cider right out of my hand.”
“Tried to tell me what?” I say.
“Conrad’s going in the hospital today, getting his operation. It’s serious. He could die. You could never see him again and you didn’t even say good-bye to him,” says Quentin.
“I didn’t know,” I say. “Nobody told me.”
“I tried to tell you,” he says again.
I can’t say much more about the bus ride. I can’t say much more about anything. I don’t see what we’re passing. I don’t hear what Quentin is saying to me.… Is he shouting? I thought I had more time, I am thinking. I didn’t realize Conrad’s operation would be so soon. I can’t believe I didn’t say good-bye to him. Tears are rolling down my cheeks and I try to keep my head turned so Quentin won’t see. If Conrad dies, I’ll die. But if he pulls through and his leg is back to normal, he won’t need that old leg brace and then he’ll play soccer again and then he’ll be so popular, I won’t be able to get near him. Then I’ll be finished too. Either way I’ll die.
I look at that mean old river, all fat and green and evil, winding along the road. Look how much trouble it caused us last night and now it’s acting all nice and normal, trying to look like any old regular river when I know it’s a menace.
First thing I do when I get to school, I put my head on my desk and I don’t want to answer anybody.
Louise is pestering me. “Too bad your sister didn’t win,” she says.
“It was fixed judging. Granddaddy told me so,” I say, lifting my head for a moment. Then I put my head back down. I figured out one afternoon during history class that if you drop the letter I from Louise’s name, you get LOUSE. And she is a louse.
My teacher, Mrs. Duster, comes up to my desk. I know it’s her ’cause I can smell the coconut hand cream, and when I open my eyes, I can see a little magnet taped to her right wrist. She’s into magnets. She thinks putting magnets on her wrists helps her life in some way. It does something to her energy field, she told my mama, brings her happiness and peace. “Jessie Lou,” she says now, “I really want you to redraw that self-portrait. Come time for the end-of-the-year dance, I want to hang all the graduates’ S.P.s in the hall. I want you to redo it. I want you to rethink it. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say. If I were to paint my self-portrait right now, I’d put a dark hollow in my interior as big as a black hole in outer space, full of nothing at all. Absolutely nothing.
When I open my eyes just a crack, I can see Conrad’s chair looking about as vacant and empty as you can get. I know it sounds stupid, but it looks like a lonely chair, like a chair that’s been ignored and overlooked for the whole school term, like a chair that’s been battered and beaten but it still stands there with quiet self-assurance. It still comes back with a clever joke and an all-knowing sense of what’s cool and what isn’t.
Moon n’ Stars is walking by Conrad’s chair and it makes me
uneasy the way she leans toward it. I want to go over to his chair and throw my arms over it and call out, “Leave it alone. It’s my chair.” Instead I sit here thinking about all the nice things Conrad’s done in his lifetime. Like the day we took that trip to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s mansion, way before I even really knew Conrad. Since Mama works, Granddaddy got to be the chaperone for the bus trip. But once we got to Monticello, Granddaddy wouldn’t get off the bus ’cause he said Thomas Jefferson had a double standard. Wrote about freedom and justice for all and at the same time he was keeping slaves. “You go along with your class, Jessie Lou,” he said to me. “I’m staying here on the bus. My job is bus proctor. I don’t want to walk around and look at a bunch of lies.”
So Granddaddy stayed on the bus the whole time and it was Conrad who kept coming back to the bus, bringing Granddaddy a bag of chips and a cup of coffee. Later he brought him a newspaper. Nobody asked Conrad to do those things. It’s just part of who he is.
Another time, just this week, Quentin Duster got on a terrible jag on the computer at the library. He’d been playing Pac-Man for five hours straight and couldn’t stop. He just couldn’t. He was looking all washed away like a real live zombie, eyes glazed, throat parched, and still he wouldn’t quit. So Conrad went over and pulled the plug on the computer, even though you’re not supposed to. Put an end to it right then. Brought Quentin Duster back down to Earth. Nobody asked Conrad to do those things. It’s just part of who he is.
Finally I lift my head up off my desk. I get up slowly and go over to the paper shelf. We’re having art class and most people are working on the subject of abstract art. Abstract Art: What is it? our teacher has written on the chalkboard. Underneath that question there is a list of answers. Elizabeth Parnell wrote: 1) It’s a mess of colors. Ryan Ferguson wrote: 2) It’s ugly. Louise the Louse wrote: 3) It doesn’t look like anything.
Everybody is trying their hand at abstract art, throwing colors around. Quentin Duster has more paint on his face than on his paper. I’m over here half looking out the window, half trying to get myself to start my new self-portrait. Finally I pull out a big huge sheet of blank paper and I lie down on it. I look up at the ceiling. If Conrad dies, I’ll die too. I think about Conrad lying in the hospital on the edge of life and death and I didn’t even say good-bye to him. Our discovery report crosses my mind too, and those T-shirts Tiny wants. Everything flies around in my mind like a bunch of worrying birds.
“Quentin,” I say. “Get over here and draw an outline around my body, will you?” Quentin hears me, but he takes his sweet time. Then he hops over with a big blue messy paintbrush and paints a fat blue line all around my body while I’m lying here.
Then I get up off the paper. I don’t know what else to do with my self-portrait. I don’t feel like adding anything more to myself. I feel like I’m changing, that things are in turmoil inside me, that I don’t want to put anything down on the portrait. There’s just a big blue messy line around me to say that I am here and that I’m thinking about things. I write Jessie Lou Ferguson under the outline and I hang it up next to all the others. Then I tear down the other one I did before that said STUPID. UGLY. SKINNY. and I rip it up and throw it in the trash can next to the teacher’s desk. She gives me a nod of approval.
Then Mrs. Duster’s up at the front of the class, squeaking chalk on the chalkboard again. “One of our students, Conrad Smith, is in the hospital. I’m going to put his room number and address up here and I want y’all to write him a card or go visit him if you get a chance,” she says. Teachers are very nice, but a lot of times they have no idea what’s going on. She is talking to a brick wall and doesn’t even know it. She hasn’t even noticed in these eight months that Conrad isn’t popular anymore. She hasn’t noticed that nobody popular ever talks to him. She doesn’t know that nobody in that class is going to send a card to Conrad. Nobody is even going to give him a thought (except for me and Quentin).
However, the address she wrote on the chalkboard gives me a ray of hope. Right now I put it in my mind that Quentin and I are going in to see Conrad today after school, while he’s still alive, before the operation, while he’s still Conrad the kind, Conrad the caring, Conrad the unpopular.
Quentin still has a spot of blue paint on his nose and it seems to match the sky behind him as we walk down our dirt road after school. We are headed to the hollow where Granddaddy’s car got stuck. We are hoping that they have pulled it out of the water and that it can be driven. Even if it is still soaking wet, but the motor is going, I know I can talk my granddaddy into taking us to visit Conrad. I know I can talk my granddaddy into anything. He loves me so much, he’d do anything I want. Like he always says, “I’d get you the moon, sweetheart, if my ladder went that high.”
It’s a pretty day, all sunny, and dandelions are blooming down in the soft lime-green grass. You can hear the roar of bees working in the apple blossoms. A big truck just drove up behind us and roared through going way too fast. Mama always says somebody ought to let the air out of the tires of the reckless drivers around here. The truck whizzes through, and a group of birds fly up in a swarm, and when the truck has passed, we see one of the birds has been hit. It’s a plain little bird my granddaddy calls a barn swallow. It flutters and flaps and then lies at the edge of the road in the grass, not moving. My granddaddy knows a lot about birds. Before the shopping mall construction site came to town, he used to go bird-watching at dawn and I used to go with him.
“Poor little bird,” I say, looking down. “It’s only hurt.”
“Looks dead to me,” says Quentin.
“Well, you could go find a box and a small jar up at the old house for me and I’ll take the little bird home to my granddaddy,” I say.
Quentin looks all hippity hoppity and nervous, but finally he agrees to go up to the house, and he comes back with an old shoebox. And I mean old. It has a 1940s lady on the outside lid looking all fashionable. I put fresh green spring grass in the box and a little jar of water and then I lift up the little bird in my hands. It’s soft and warm and I can feel it quivering. I lay it down in the grass and it lies there in the box without moving. We did this once before with a baby bird that fell out of a nest. My granddaddy took care of the bird till it could fly. He called it Hasenpfeffer.
“Come on, let’s get going,” I say. “We’ll take the little bird with us, but we have to be careful with it.”
“Jessie Lou,” says Quentin Duster, “I think you’re half crazy.”
“Guess that’s better than all crazy,” I say. Then we head off down the road looking for my granddaddy’s car.
We’re just running along Creek Road passing a line of those big round bales of hay in the field next to us. There appears to be something or someone lying on top of one of the bales. Though I try to stop him, Quentin starts to call out something noisy. I put my hand over his mouth so he just makes a bunch of weird sounds, and then somebody rolls over and sits up, and Lord love us, as Mama says, it turns out to be Tiny Bailey.
Tiny drops down off the squashed bale. He’s got a bunch of comic books rolled up under one arm and he looks all ruffled up and sleepy. He’s got some hay in his hair. He gets up on the road and looks back at us. I just kind of stand there staring, not saying a word, like I’m trying to swallow one of Mama’s burned cookies. Finally Quentin says, “Hey, Tiny, nice day! Didn’t mean to wake y’all up.”
Tiny looks down at the road and then he turns around to walk away. With his back to us, he calls out, “I need those shirts by the weekend, Duster. After that, it’s too late.” We don’t have a chance to answer him ’cause by the time something comes to us, he’s out of range, and besides, we don’t exactly have an answer.
Quentin says, “He cuts classes. That’s why he’s a fifth-year senior. Sleeps all the time ’cause of his size.”
“Quentin Duster,” I say, “is there anything you don’t have a lamebrain answer for?”
“Yeah, there is one thing,” says Quentin, smili
ng and looking up at the sky.
Knowing we need to hurry, I let the subject drop. I carry that poor little barn swallow and that box carefully as I can. We run hard, about doing splits in the air, just flying. And as we run, birds in the field rise up around us in a great dark singing cloud.
“We have to get to Conrad,” I shout out, “before he gets operated on. We just gotta run faster.”
“Hey, why are you always bringing up Conrad, anyway? You’re always going Conrad this and Conrad that. You don’t like Conrad, do you?” says Quentin, looking over at me as we run along the road.
“I like him,” I say, “but I don’t like him.”
“Good,” says Quentin. “Don’t gross me out by liking that idiot.”
It turns out we do get a ride in Granddaddy’s Chrysler Imperial. He is driving up the road and he stops the car, leans out the window, and says, “On land and sea, you can’t put this baby down. What’d I tell you? She’s a tank. Thirty years old and still going strong.”
We get in the car and Granddaddy takes the shoebox with the bird in it and puts it on the front seat next to him and then he hits the pedal (wet as it is), and before you know it, we’re sailing along the highway and then we’re pulling into the hospital parking lot.
I knew Granddaddy would agree to take us to the hospital, but I know he won’t go in. As soon as he parks the car, he looks over at us and says, “Y’all go on in now, sweetheart. I’ll stay right here with this poor little bird and wait for you. Those doctors are all crazy in there. Whenever they operate, they leave half their instruments inside you by mistake. No thank you. I’ll be right here when you come out.”
Quentin and I head out toward the entrance of the hospital.
“It would have been a lot nicer if we could have brought Conrad a present. I should have gone in the bookstore and got him a book about Lewis and Clark,” I say.