Criss Cross

by Lynne Rae Perkins

“Not yet. Keep going.”

  “Jaws seek all position at pivot. The action can then be more skillful. Easily to put or also remove. Who wrote this?”

  “Someone who doesn’t speak English,” said her dad. He unfurled himself out from under the sink along with the odd-looking tool, and together they studied the instruction sheet. Fortunately, there were also diagrams they could be confused by.

  “I like the way it sounds, though,” said Debbie. “Listen: Always care to respect the tool, and it will serve you for indefinite years, even to your children.”

  “That would be you,” said her father. “I’ll leave it to you in my will.”

  They decided that Debbie, since she was smaller and more flexible, might be able to maneuver better among the buckets and cleaning products and pipes. After checking the pictures again and examining the mechanism of the basin wrench, she crawled in backward, like a crab. She oriented herself in relation to the pipes.

  She put the jaws easily in position.

  The precise teeth bit sharply the slippery oil to a grip.

  The action was more skillful.

  It only took a couple of minutes, and she felt respect, admiration even, for the tool.

  Sliding back out, she handed it to her dad. She stood up and washed her hands in the sink while he watched the pipe below to satisfy himself that the dripping had stopped.

  It was satisfying. Debbie considered, briefly, becoming a plumber. Showing up at someone’s door with the basin wrench, everyone so glad to see her. On the other hand, people would call on the phone in the middle of the night. She would have to get out of her warm bed and go mess with cold, slimy pipes in flooded basements. Wouldn’t she? And then there would be all those clogged toilets and drains.

  “How about some bean soup?” said her dad. He emptied the can into a pot and mixed it with water while Debbie got out the cheese and crackers and ketchup and poured glasses of milk.

  The basin wrench, back in its cardboard sleeve, was stashed under the sink, waiting for another opportunity to serve. It wasn’t in a hurry. It was made of heavy cast aluminum and it could wait for indefinite years.

  CHAPTER 9

  Guitar Lessons

  The floor of the church basement was speckled green linoleum. Whitewashed ductwork was suspended from the low ceiling, which was held up at intervals by thick, round pillars made of something. A picture of Jesus suffering little children to come unto Him hung on a paneled wall next to an attendance chart spattered with foil stars. Outside the window, above the upright piano, the legs of passersby occasionally scissored from left to right, or right to left.

  Somewhere inside these walls lurked the means to produce spaghetti dinners. Somewhere in the shadowy recesses there could be trays of cookies sprinkled with colored sugar, and cans of Hi-C waiting to blend with ginger ale and become punch in a cut-glass bowl, from whence it could be dippered into water-soluble paper cups. Somewhere there had to be at least some of those pastel mints. At the present moment, though, none of these things was visible. The only aroma in the room was of floor wax.

  Hector opened his guitar case and lifted out the guitar. He was the first one there, but there was another guitar case sitting on the floor, and a circle of metal folding chairs, and the lights were on. So he was pretty sure he was in the right place.

  A church basement was not where he had imagined learning to play the guitar. Hector had not imagined having the Presbyterian youth minister for his teacher, either. His mother had heard about these lessons, which were free, and his parents said that if he took the free lessons, they would buy him a guitar.

  This was the danger of sharing your dreams with your parents. If you told them you wanted to learn to play the guitar, all they heard you say was, “I want to learn to play the guitar,” and then they found some practical, convenient, cheap way, often involving a church basement, for you to do it.

  But Hector had not come up with any plan of his own. And owning a guitar seemed like an important stepping stone on the way to being a guitar player. So he pawned his soul and said he would take the lessons from the Presbyterian youth minister. What the hell, he thought. Or heck, he thought. What the heck.

  Six people with guitars trickled into the church basement, not counting Pastor Don. Two were adults: a gray-haired woman named Mary, and Mr. Schimpf (“Bob”), who had been Hector’s pack leader the year he was a Cub Scout. Probably Mr. Schimpf was looking to be able to play songs around the campfire. Mary had half-spectacles. Hector didn’t notice much else about her, because his attention was drawn at that moment to two girls he didn’t know who had just come in together.

  One girl looked as if she might be Hector’s age and one seemed older, maybe Rowanne’s age. The older girl told Pastor Don her name was Robin. Hector didn’t quite catch the younger one’s name. It almost sounded like she said, “Metal,” but he didn’t think that could be right.

  Whatever her name was, she was pretty. She had a thick, careless braid of chestnut hair, a quick smile, and dark, merry eyes. She wore some kind of a fuzzy lavender pullover, and when she crossed her legs and lifted her guitar onto her lap, she had an interesting way of tucking the foot of the bottom leg back under her chair that made Hector feel melty. He looked away in self-preservation.

  To Hector’s left was whose first name was Dan. Many girls at school were infatuated with his shallow athletic splendor and his golden handsome features that were biologically inherited and had nothing to do with the kind of person he might actually be.

  Hector wondered what PERSIK 45 was doing there. Wasn’t there some sport that needed to be excelled at? He wondered if Metal was the kind of girl who fell in love with football players. He wondered if there was a kind of girl who didn’t fall in love with football players. He peeked at her over the rims of his glasses, his face tilted down at his guitar as if he were inspecting it. She was talking to her friend. There was a small brown mole on her cheek, half an inch from the corner of her mouth.

  Dan Persik grunted, “Hey,” at Hector, acknowledging that he knew him from somewhere, maybe from ten years of being in the same class at school or living on the same block since their respective births.

  Hector grunted, “Hey,” back, completing the caveman greeting ritual.

  To Hector’s right sat Russell Kebbesward. A lock of dark hair fell onto his ivory forehead, and his cheeks and his heavy forearms were flushed with rosy feathers of concentration and effort, even before the class started.

  To Russell’s right were Mary and Mr. Schimpf, then Pastor Don. He was wearing his pastor’s outfit, the black shirt with the black and white stand-up collar, and a cardigan sweater.

  Pastor Don’s orange fuzz of hair was retreating from his pink forehead. His voice was high and fuzzy, too, and on the thin side, but he was not afraid to use it. He launched into a song almost immediately, accompanying himself on the guitar in order to:

  a) show them what they, too, would soon be able to do?

  b) prove that he knew how to play the guitar?

  c) get everyone in the mood? Hector thought maybe also to

  d) perform for an audience. Maybe there had been a time, a moment, when he had made the choice between being a rock star and being a Presbyterian minister. He had that funny voice, but he seemed to enjoy performing. He threw his head back and scrunched his eyes shut and emoted. He did as much as could be done with that voice. The abandoned rock star option had not quite given up. It had not completely faded away.

  His guitar playing wasn’t fancy, but it worked. When he finally finished his song several minutes later, everyone clapped.

  “That was just delightful,” said the woman named Mary, setting off a ripple of murmured agreement that swelled, then faded into a pause.

  And then they got down to business.

  They learned how to tune their guitars, and they learned the G, C, and D chords. They had to strum while switching between chords at unpredictable intervals, in response to Pastor Don’s shouted comman
ds. Hector found himself intently focused on the fingers of his left hand.

  The sound made by seven beginning guitarists and one more advanced guitarist strumming simultaneously but not in unison in a cavernous church basement was proof that sound is a physical occurrence. You could feel the sound waves colliding. They took up space.

  Pastor Don had a strong, steady strum, and there was a definite difference between his G chord and his C chord. He somehow kept his inept band of wild strummers bound loosely together, and even managed to convey the idea that they were moving forward, that what they were doing had something to do with music.

  At some point he began singing “You Are My Sunshine,” giving the impression that they were actually playing a song. When he switched over to “This Land Is My Land,” which apparently they also already knew, Mr. Schimpf joined in, followed by the gray-haired Mary. Their voices flowed in short bursts, ebbing when they had to make chord changes. Russell stopped playing altogether to give his full attention to singing “This Land Is My Land” in his sonorous, melancholy bass. The singing was spreading clockwise around the circle. It had arrived at Hector.

  He looked to his left. PERSIK 45 didn’t look like he would be singing. He was studiously bent over his guitar, stealing glances at Russell and Pastor Don. Hector saw one of the glances, but he could not read it. There might be derision in it, but there were other possibilities. Maybe PERSIK 45 had a headache, or abdominal discomfort. Or maybe it was a glance of admiration, as expressed by the facial muscles of a football player.

  The two girls weren’t singing yet, but they didn’t look like they thought singing would be stupid. They were just concentrating on their chords.

  Hector could pretend he was concentrating on his chords.

  But what the heck, he thought. He started singing. Screw the football player. He liked to sing.

  When the class was over, Hector maneuvered himself across the circle and opened his guitar case on the floor next to the two girls. He thought he had pulled this off smoothly, appearing to glance around casually for an empty spot, then heading for this one as if it were the only space available, despite the fact that the cluster of chairs and people and guitars filled only about 3 percent of the large, low room.

  “So,” he said (very casually) to the younger girl, “what did you say your name was?”

  “Meadow,” she said.

  “Metto?” he repeated, not understanding what she meant.

  “You know; butterflies, flowers, bees, grass, sunshine: Meadow.”

  “Oh. That’s a really unusual name.”

  “Hector’s an unusual name, too.”

  “But it’s a name. Meadow is, like, a word. It’s a really nice word, but it’s not usually a name.”

  “Well, I heard my dad say it would have been more precise to call me Tent, but Meadow seemed better for a name. I guess they used to go camping a lot. Why did your parents call you Hector? If you’re going to be technical, that’s a word, too. Why would you name your child a word that means ‘to bother people'?”

  Most people didn’t know that, thought Hector. He said, “That’s small h hector. Capital h Hector was a Trojan, in the Trojan War. But I’m actually named after the leader of a Cuban band that played at a dance where my mom and dad met or got engaged or something.”

  “Same thing, then,” said Meadow. “Sort of.”

  Hector thought it was going really well, but he didn’t know what else to say. So after hesitating for a moment, he said, “See you next week, then,” and turned away. He felt the milk of human kindness go coursing all through him. He felt warmth for all mankind.

  He turned toward Russell Kebbesward, who stood next to a folding chair where his loaded guitar case was precariously balanced. Both plump hands were in his pockets with the thumbs hooked outside. His brown, soulful eyes were focused on something that wasn’t there, a spot moving in midair. They always looked that way.

  “How’s it going, Russell?” said Hector.

  “Well,” said Russell, turning slightly in Hector’s direction. “It’s going well. Thank you.”

  It seemed as if Russell might be gathering his thoughts to go on and Hector, feeling so warm and milky and kind, waited.

  He set his guitar case back on the floor.

  He began to suspect, though, that Russell’s thoughts were not gathering at all, that if they even existed, they were wandering through his head like lurching strangers on a moving train. If any two of them met up, it would be purely accidental.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw the rest of the class heading for the exit. Mr. Schimpf was chatting with Mary, Dan Persik was walking out with Meadow and Robin. His head was bent toward them in that big-tall-handsome-football-player-talking-to-pretty-girl way. Their faces were tilted back up at him, but Hector couldn’t see them. He could only see their hair, part of their ears, and a sliver of their cheeks. It was possible that they were just listening out of politeness, not enjoyment. It was possible.

  He watched as they squeezed through the double doors all at once, in a tight little group with their guitar cases, making a joke of it. Their laughter bounced around the hollow stairwell, multiplying by echoes and spilling back into the room until the doors fell shut. A couple of seconds later three pairs of legs scissored past outside the window above the piano, accompanied by the scraping of feet and a murmur of muffled voices that came, then went.

  Hector turned back to Russell. Pastor Don came over, too, making them another threesome.

  “We had some fine voices here tonight,” he said. “Yours among them.”

  “Thank you,” said Russell.

  Again, he looked as if he might say more. Again, he didn’t.

  To keep things moving, Hector said, “I liked that song you played at the beginning. Is that pretty hard to play?”

  But he only half-listened to Pastor Don’s response, which was lengthy and enthusiastic. He was probably a nice guy, an interesting guy. He was probably saying something interesting. But an important part of Hector was no longer in the building. What am I doing here? he thought. What do these people have to do with me? Looking from one to the other.

  “Well, I’ve got to go, then,” he said. “See you next week.” This, for the second time that evening. As he headed through the double doors, up through the echoing stairwell and outside, he remembered saying it the first time, when he said it to Meadow. What a funny name, he thought. But a pretty name. Beautiful, really. All sunny and “bright golden haze” and all that. It seemed like she ought to have golden hair with that name, but she seemed sunny, anyway.

  Hector thought up some similar, corresponding names for himself. Tree. Bark. Fjord. Cliff. Rock. Bam-Bam. Maybe not Bam-Bam. That would be more like Dan Persik. How about Storm? he thought as a sudden powerful gust of sharp air propelled him across the street. How about Rain? Wind? Sprinkle? Monsoon? Wet Pedestrian with Cardboard Guitar Case. Dash. Flash. Trip. Slip. Sprawl. Rip?

  He managed, though, to hold the guitar case aloft, like a trophy.

  CHAPTER 10

  Conversation in the Dark:

  Brilliant Eskimo Thoughts

  P: Do you think things are meant to be?

  D: What do you mean?

  P: You know, how people say, “It was meant to be,” or, “It wasn’t meant to be.” Or, “they were meant for each other.”

  D: You mean like (singing) “they say for every boy and girl, there’s just one love in this whole world….”

  P: Yeah, like that.

  D: I don’t know. In one way, it makes you think, “Oh, I don’t have to worry, it’s all taken care of, it will all work out.” But in another way, it’s like, what if your life turns out really lousy, is it supposed to make you feel better that somebody planned that for you? And there’s nothing you can do about it?

  P: I think it does make some people feel better. That’s when they say, “God works in mysterious ways.” Although no one wants to be the one He’s working on that way. It makes people f
eel like there is some really worthwhile reason that they’re having such a crappy life. And like they will be rewarded later.

  D: It doesn’t make me feel better. I think sometimes things just happen. And also, I think people can make things happen.

  P: I wish I could make myself be taller.

  D: Taller? Why?

  P: I just want to be closer to eye level. I’m tired of talking to people’s chests. If I were in a movie, I’d have to stand on a box. I’m like a beautiful person who’s been put in a short, pudgy body with frizzy hair.

  D: I don’t think of you as short. Or pudgy. And I like your hair. Your hair is perfect on you.

  ?: I don’t think of me as being short, either. In fifth grade, I was the tallest girl in the class. I was even taller than the boys. But then I stopped growing and everyone passed me up. I still think I’m tall until I look around.

  D: You could wear really big platform shoes.

  ?: I want to. My mom won’t let me buy them. She says I’ll fall and break something.

  D: They do look kind of tricky. But people wear them. They look more comfortable than high heels—at least your feet aren’t tilted at such a steep angle—and they seem less tippy.

  P: Miss Epler wears them all the time.

  D: She’s trying to command authority.

  P: She hasn’t learned how yet. She still acts like a human being.

  D: What if someone gave you platform shoes as a gift? Would your mom let you wear them?

  P: Who’s going to give me platform shoes as a gift? You?

  ?: Have you ever noticed that if there’s a character in a movie who’s supposed to be not-beautiful, they just take an incredibly beautiful person and do something to her hair and make her wear big, thick glasses?