The Antichrist of Kokomo County

by David Skinner

  Offering the boy a smile as close as I can make to a fatherly one, I once more played my ace in the hole. Oh, and what do you know? A Japanese cartoon marathon. Hypnotic. Anesthetizing. Perfect.

  Eat your heart out, Ivan Pavlov (and your little dogs’ too).

  In record time Sparky was splayed out on the sofa, the half and half, cookies, and TV coagulating his mind and body. Now free to begin the next phase of my mission, I snuck out to the garage and hid the mitt underneath a stack of Christmas sweaters before returning to the kitchen, where, via the astonishing invention of the telephone I would, with extreme prejudice, confront and destroy his second grade teacher, Mr. Hanzy.

  A little about the man: Put charitably, he’s an enthusiastic, conscientious, knowledgeable, and extremely effective teacher, renowned and celebrated amongst other educators and parents for knowing how to get the best out of any student. Put less charitably, he’s a meddlesome, annoying putz who does his job way too well for an elementary school teacher in a shithole like Kokomo County.

  If I’d had a kid other than Sparky, I’d have been ecstatic that Elmo Lincoln Elementary * had a teacher of his quality and energy, but since I didn’t, Mr. Hanzy was an annoying putz. And dangerous.

  “WHY DID YOU GIVE MY SON A BASEBALL MITT?” I barked at him through the phone. My voice, thanks to the conclusion of puberty almost twenty years earlier, no longer crackled like popcorn being stepped on. There even may have been some BOOM in there. At least, I’d like to think there was, like distant thunder.

  “Michael asked me to tell him about baseball, Mr. Horvath,” Hanzy said. “You’re not gonna get upset over this, are you?”

  Allow me to take a moment to point out that Mr. Hanzy—and all the teachers of Elmo Lincoln for that matter—believed the wife and me to be a couple of paranoid nutcases. This was somewhat intentional on our part, to keep them at arm’s length, but also one of the unavoidable consequences of having to obsess over every aspect of our son’s life.

  We demanded copies of syllabi and lesson plans for every class and subject well ahead of time, as well as lunch menus, recess activities, and field trips. We wanted to know what Sparky was going to be taught and how he was going to be taught, what his homework would be like, what kind of exercise he would be getting, what sort of meals he would be eating, etc., all to ensure he would be one of the worst students every year.

  We worked tirelessly to make sure he had no idea about Ben Franklin and that kite and the lightning storm. No clue about the difference between igneous and sedimentary rock.

  Where’s the United States on a map of the world? Gurgle...

  What’s five times five? Jabba!

  For a while, we did our job a little too well, as at the time of my confab with Hanzy, Sparky was in the midst of his second go-around through the second grade, meaning more individual attention from his teacher. Seeing how the last thing the wife and I wanted was for Sparky to have extra attention paid to him (the perfect scenario is and always will be for him to be the quintessential forgotten child), this held-back-a-year stuff constituted a sizable mistake on our part, especially when you consider the teacher vowing to save Sparky’s scholastic soul was one of the most competent practitioners in the field. Truth be told, I had begun to worry Hanzy might be on to us, or at minimum that he believed we were responsible to a degree for how stupid our son was. Thankfully, the thing he would never figure out was that we were doing it on purpose, which gave the wife and me the upper hand.

  And that we knew how to play. We played it paranoid and crazy. We screamed and shouted and made outrageous accusations. We threatened legal action at the drop of a hat. We were so smart back then. Brilliant. What a shame we couldn’t keep it up.

  Since Hanzy had added a touch of indignation to his voice, implying he didn’t think he had done anything to deserve my barky, slightly boomy voice, I knew it was incumbent upon me to steamroll him before he wrested control of the conversation.

  “And how did TELLING him about baseball end up with you GIVING him a mitt, Hanzy?”

  “Let’s try to stay calm, Mr. Horvath,” Hanzy said. “Your son asked what a baseball is for. I told him I could show him if he had a mitt. He said he didn’t know what a mitt was, and so I let him borrow an old one of mine, that’s all. He’s not allergic to it is he?”

  Heh. One of the ploys we’ve used in the past to prevent Sparky from participating in anything was to lie about his health. I know, Christians and honesty are supposed to go hand in hand, but like the abolitionist heroes of the Underground Railroad lying to Confederate soldiers about hidden slaves, we felt we had no other option here, as, despite his awful diet and petril-kaka whatever-the-whatchamacallit, Sparky has remained remarkably disease-free and of a more durable constitution than we would have preferred. Given that, the wife and I felt we had no choice but to pore through the American Medical Association Family Medical Guide and assign various illnesses, allergies, and afflictions (like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, IBS) to Sparky so as to force his teachers to exclude him from almost every school activity you could think of, but in particular those that could help him develop intelligence, friendships, cardiovascular health, even basic hand-eye coordination.

  All bad. Trust me.

  “No, he’s not allergic, Hanzy,” I said, “but I don’t understand why you would think to give him a baseball glove. To be honest, I wonder what your intentions are.”

  “My intentions? That he learn about a game he has shown some interest in!”

  “Well, it seems on the inappropriate side to me,” I said. “I assume you didn’t give mitts to all the students in my son’s class, which puts this into the category of special treatment, and that makes me suspicious.”

  “How in the world could you possibly—”

  “I don’t think I need to remind you there are a lot of sickos out there, Hanzy. Remember Mr. Quimby and all those bicycles and—”

  “NOW YOU WATCH IT THERE, SIR!”

  Heh. Mr. Quimby was a high school biology teacher in nearby Punchy Hills who had been caught sniffing boys’ sweaty bicycle seats for reasons other than scientific inquiry. The subsequent wave of disgust and outrage that swept through Kokomo County gave birth to a new era of distrust between parents and teachers (it also made things easier for the wife and me).

  “All I’m saying is that everybody trusted Mr. Quimby,” I said to Hanzy. “He was a pillar of the community, and look what he turned out to be. One can’t be too careful these days.”

  “Okay, you know what? I’m sorry for the glove,” Hanzy said. “I shouldn’t have given it to him without consulting you first—but can I tell you something, Mr. Horvath?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The only reason I gave Michael the mitt was because he was dying to know about baseball. I’ve never seen him like that before. It was like the lights had finally come on. And I figured if I got him playing baseball, then maybe I could figure out how to tie it to his schoolwork and get him moving forward for once.

  “I mean, I can’t teach him anything, Mr. Horvath. He has the worst retention skills I’ve ever seen. Anything he learns one day he forgets the next. His test scores are terrible. His homework hardly better. Arts and crafts time he has to put his head down because he’s allergic to everything we use. I’ve gone out of my mind trying to figure out an activity that won’t make him itchy or swell his head up or fracture something!”

  None of those things would likely happen if Sparky were to come into contact with art supplies or experience light to moderate exercise. It’s surprising how no teacher has ever really tried to sneak past our rules. Amazing the fear lawsuits and a Republican governor inspire amongst educators. I, for one, am pleased they don’t make much money. Keeps them in line.

  “But I still have hope for him,” Hanzy said, “and I have to believe the pieces are there for him to be an average student at l
east.”

  “Maybe all he needs is more time,” I said. “Some of mankind’s brightest minds got off to a slow start in school, you know.”

  “Be that as it may, this can’t go on for much longer. Some of my colleagues think I should recommend your son for Special Needs, and I’m starting to believe that might be the best place for him.”

  Ho boy. Special Needs. Even more attention. We had gotten sloppy. Instead of making sure Sparky understood rudimentary aspects of his subjects in order to guarantee barely passing grades, the wife and I had been skipping that part and simply doing his homework as poorly as possible for him while he was socked out on the couch.

  “Not that any of this should come as a surprise to you, Mr. Horvath. You and your wife monitor your son’s grades closer than any other parents in the school,” Hanzy said.

  “That’s only because we care,” I said.

  “What do you propose I do, then? Help me out here.”

  I hated the thought of it, but I was going to have to give in a little here. Otherwise, our intentions might be exposed, increasing the odds Sparky would one day be taken from us, and if that happened, well, might as well bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

  “Try the baseball thing,” I said after a huge sigh. “Maybe that will help.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Horvath. Thank you so much. I know this will work. And I know how to teach it to him so his math, writing, spelling—all of those skills will improve dramatically.”

  “Let’s hope so,” I said. Or not, I thought. Really, really not.

  “We’ll play catch. I’ll teach him the basics of the game, and maybe he can get into a league somewhere.”

  Good God, what the hell had happened here? Somehow we’d gone from me barking and booming and hinting at pederasty to Sparky playing catch, playing games, and joining leagues to boot. Soon he might learn gamesmanship, working and playing well with others; soon his mind might be freed, his imagination unshackled. Perhaps the most terrible of qualities—ambition, leadership—would begin to manifest, and all because of that stupid baseball and this fucking putz.

  “A league like T-Ball?” I asked, my voice, like my nerve, crinkling like cellophane.

  “He’s probably a little too old for that, but there are a number of beginner leagues out there. No pressure. All about learning and having fun.”

  “Sounds nice, but let’s take it one step at a time. I don’t know if Sparky’s knees will hold up for all of this.”

  “I agree one hundred percent, Mr. Horvath. One hundred and ten percent!”

  Phoo. This had gotten ugly. Hanzy was now pretty much slobbering everything he said, so worked up over the prospect of rescuing Sparky I could have sworn I heard “Eye of the Tiger” in the background. One more hopeless child rescued by the unparalleled genius of the Kokomo County public school system’s superstar second-grade teacher.

  “We’ll go slow and steady, Mr. Horvath,” Hanzy said. “Baby steps. Good enough?”

  7

  In case you’re curious what we’re up to now, Sparky and I are, without dispute, inside the Lawrence P. Fenwick Building.

  That’s right. We made it.

  Where we are precisely in the Lawrence P. Fenwick Building is in the Lois Esther Fenwick Foyer waiting for the elevator. I decided against the Jonathan Frederick Fenwick Stairway as stairs are good exercise, one of the last things Sparky needs.

  Parenting: it’s all in the details.

  Speak of the devil, the boy had something to say to me as we walked inside. This is what it was:

  “I want to go home.”

  Here’s how I responded:

  “No.”

  In other good news, I am no longer looking for somewhere to sit and put my head in my hands. Like most feelings, it has passed. The bad news is it has been replaced by sullenness, which makes me want to frown, trudge around with my hands shoved in my pockets, and squeeze my eyes in irritation. All in all, not much of an improvement.

  Why sullen? My phone. It has news for me. A message from the old man. One I have no desire to hear, as messages from him tend to go something like this:

  Hee-ay, Frankie! How ya doing? Things are going sooper-rooper here. Your brother scored not one, not two, not three or four or five, but SIX goals in his soccer game yesterday. Some kind of record they say. Did I tell you he’s in that league he’s three years too young for? Well, he is, and they’re saying he’s going to play in some kind of statewide all-star tournament next spring. Hee! Only eight years old. Anyhoo-ee! He doesn’t seem to think it’s that big of a deal. He says soccer, and I quote, “’Tis but a childish trifle and only useful to the extent it will be a foundation for future endeavors.” Hee-hee! Can you believe the way he talks? So refined and intelligent. And only eight years old. So how’s my grandson? Are they still talking about putting him in with the dummies? Boy, I sure hope that’s not true anymore. I mean, after all, he’s just off to a slow start, kind of like you. That reminds me. Your brother said that he’s more than willing to tutor Michael if it will do any good, and I think it would, you know? This kid of mine tells me things in ways I never thought of before, and sheesh, he couldn’t get a bad grade if he tried. Only eight years old. So yeah. Give me a call. Oh, and Joyce says hi. She wants to ask you about something but she says she’ll call you later.

  And they’re all like that. Younger brother is a god. Is your son still a moron? Ain’t life grand? Yaddity-bladdity. So I believe I’m being fairly gracious by cloaking myself in sullenness. I should be beside myself at the thought of another message from the old man. I should be maniacally plotting his demise along with that of my show-offy, smartass brother. Instead, I suffer. Instead, I endure. Instead, I sullen.

  And wait for the elevator.

  8

  After hanging up on Hanzy and coming to a full appreciation of the jeopardy the human race was now in, I realized there was nothing left to do but pray. Pray that Mr. Hanzy’s meddling would come to naught, and that something as seemingly unimportant as baseball wouldn’t undo everything the wife and I had been working so hard to prevent.

  Speaking of, when she came home that night and heard my confession of what had happened (yes, she screamed bloody murder), she came to the same conclusion:

  “All we can do now is pray.”

  And lo and behold, we did. We prayed to God that our son would remain an uncoordinated, overweight, friendless imbecile. That the Lord would have mercy on us and cover for our screw-up.

  I said before I can be a skeptic, and some days I am that and then some, but one thing I do know is that when your back’s against the wall you can always kick it Upstairs, and that is a big advantage even we wishy-washy religious people have over all of you godless nitwits.

  You never feel something is ever lost.

  In addition to praying, the wife and I danced around in a Pentecostal sort of way. Like most people of our special strain of Christianity, we saw it as prayer in motion meant to move the Hand of God.

  Hoppity-hop. Please God, make it so our son won’t catch the ball. Shuffle-step! That he won’t get coordinated. Turn and kick! That he won’t improve his math. Spin, clickety-step, clickety-step! Or read better. Arms up and shimmy! Or have friends, dear Jesus...

  Superstitious? Absolutely. Batshit? Based on the rules of rational thought you could make a convincing argument. But in our defense, the wife was frantic and terrified, I wasn’t feeling too great either, and compared to all the unspeakable things human beings are capable of, I think we can agree praying and jumping around is rather tame. So while you could make the argument that the above craziness may not do any perceivable good, it sure as hell doesn’t hurt anybody—at least not in a way that can be proven in a court of law. Scoff and mock all you like, but the dancing and praying stuff, goofy though it was and is, was and is harmless. No more unsafe than a boisterous game of Twister withou
t a mat or a spin board.

  I assume you’ve played the game before, yes? Probably not one of your finer moments, and it got you absolutely nowhere in life, so back off. Because what we did worked.

  I think.

  *

  A miracle! A coincidence!

  Maybe our prayers moved God to action, or maybe what happened was inevitable regardless of what we did beforehand. I could give a shit, really. What matters is we got what we wanted.

  Sparky got nowhere near a baseball league of any kind. He did not learn gamesmanship, the thrill of victory, ambition, or leadership. He made no friends. Truth be told, he got no further than one session of playing catch.

  At recess the day after Hanzy and I spoke, he and Sparky went to the field behind Elmo Lincoln with two mitts and a baseball. Starting just a few feet from one another, they began to throw back and forth.

  Hanzy said it took Sparky only a few minutes to get the proper form down, and after a dozen tosses or so, he was able to throw and catch the thing with surprising consistency.

  “By the way, are you sure he’s never played before?” he asked me.

  Sparky hadn’t, but I couldn’t allow anyone to think there might be more to my son than met the eye, so I lied.

  “Here and there when he was younger,” I said. “He didn’t seem to like it back then, so we quit.”

  “Oh. He told me he’d never been allowed.”

  “He probably just doesn’t remember. His memory isn’t the greatest, you know.”

  “Right.”

  Next, Hanzy said he had Sparky run around and catch longer throws. He promised me he did this only after Sparky had assured him I had granted him permission to run (I hadn’t).

  “ALL RIGHT!” Sparky yelled, according to Mr. Hanzy, before taking off after a popup.