Jack Adrift

by Jack Gantos

  I could tell he didn’t want to agree with me, especially after I had embarrassed him in front of everyone. But I also knew he was pleased that I had listened to him.

  “I thought we talked through all that Elliott stuff,” he said. “I thought you had already ground it down to nothing.”

  “I guess I still had a little left over,” I said. “And now I think I’m becoming a bully.”

  “Yeah. Pete told me you gave that kid a baldy. Well, maybe we need to add that to our list to talk about,” he said.

  “But you said that’s what Mom does,” I said. “Talk, talk, talk.”

  “Here’s a little secret between us,” he said. “I don’t always like to admit it but your mom is right at least half the time, so let’s take a page out of her book and talk about the stuff that’s bothering you.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Right after I give you a baldy, you can start by apologizing to the kids. Then once you mop that up we’ll work on Elliott, and it’s my guess your bully problem will disappear on its own.”

  “Thanks for talking about this,” I said, “but do I have to get a baldy?”

  He rubbed his hand across his chin while he reconsidered. “Your mom would court-martial me if you came home looking like a cue ball.”

  I smiled up at him. I knew I was off the hook.

  “Now, go take a shower!” he barked. “You smell! Then go straight to sleep! No brooding! And that’s an order!”

  “Yes, sir!” I snapped back. I felt better already.

  Second Infancy

  I was staring at her again. Miss Noelle. I had my elbows propped up on my desk and my head in my hands and I was quietly murmuring everything she said with my lips just parted like a ventriloquist. When she would stop and cock her head to one side, trying to catch who was making the tiny buzzing sounds, I would stop. She’d start. I’d start. She’d talk quickly. I’d buzz quickly. She’d suddenly go slow. I’d go slow. It was as if I were in a very fast car, hugging the road, speeding along the straightaways, downshifting on the curves, leaning left and right, sticking with the road like glue as my senses entirely focused on imitating every contour of her ribbon of words. It was exhilarating. I imagined driving my silver-and-black convertible Porsche with Miss Noelle in the front seat. The wind whipped through our hair. The golden sun reflected off her tinted glasses. She snapped open her purse and pulled out a lipstick. I kept the car steady as she slid the lipstick back and forth across her red lips. She had total confidence in my driving ability. Somehow, I had been a Le Mans race-car driver before I met her. I was skilled, and as I drove, with one black driving glove on the wheel and the other on the gearshift knob, I seamlessly slipped through the gears and steered through the pull of the hairpin turns. We were in the Swiss Alps, on a skiing trip. We were driving up from the south of France where we had just been to a film festival. My new movie was being praised. I was the star. Everyone in the entire world wanted to be with me. But I only wanted to be with Miss Noelle.

  “Jack,” Miss Noelle said sharply, appearing suddenly in front of my desk. “Have you listened to a word I said about our Outer Banks science projects?”

  “No, Miss Noelle,” I said in a practiced voice. “I was already thinking way ahead to our next assignment.”

  She leaned down close to my ear. “I don’t believe you. See me after class,” she said.

  Automatically my lips buzzed, “See me after class.”

  “What?” she asked sharply.

  “I look forward to seeing you after class,” I replied, smiling innocently.

  She took a long deep breath then turned back to the class and continued to describe what nature the Wright brothers had first found when they arrived on Cape Hatteras in 1900. I tried to listen. I looked directly up at her face. I watched her lips open and close. I heard the words float out of her mouth and then slowly I drifted back to thinking about our great life together driving up and down the mountain peaks of the Alps. I just couldn’t help it.

  At the end of the day I eagerly waited for everyone to leave the room. I pulled a chair up to the other side of her desk and stared at her. “I’m seeing you after class,” I said sweetly, “just as you asked. See, I was listening.”

  She frowned. “You listen selectively,” she replied.

  “I’m picky,” I explained.

  “You’re slipping,” she said, leaning forward with her elbows on her desk. “Instead of becoming more mature, you are going backward. You’re acting like a baby.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “A baby would cry. I’m smiling.”

  “Believe me, you are acting like a baby,” she repeated. “You are spending too much time thinking about me, and not enough time thinking about what I’m trying to teach you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “What wildlife did the Wright brothers find on the Outer Banks?” she asked quickly. “What?”

  “Mosquitoes?” I guessed. “Sand fleas?”

  She shook her head in disgust. “You are becoming a love pest!” she hissed. “So I set up an appointment for you with the school psychologist.”

  That chilled me. I had never talked to a psychologist before. Dad always called them head shrinkers. He claimed that anyone who went to one was crazy before they saw one and had to be locked up in a padded cell after they saw one. “Do I have to?” I asked.

  “Either that,” she said, “or I’ll have Mrs. Nivlash transfer you to another class.”

  That got me. “Okay,” I said, squirming in my chair. “Okay, I’ll see the shrink.”

  “Psychologist,” she said, correcting me.

  “Psychologist,” I buzzed.

  Mrs. Rutland, the psychologist, shared a small office with the county health officer. They took turns doing pretty much the same thing. The health officer picked through the hair on my head, searching for lice and other vermin. Mrs. Rutland was going to stare into my head and pick through my brain looking for loose screws, stripped gears, and other signs of madness.

  When I sat down I smiled at her and crossed my hands on my lap. She reminded me of my mother. She was neatly dressed, but not overdressed, her hair was done at home and not in a beauty parlor, and her hands were red, I imagined, from doing dishes. The first thing she said was, “If you lie to me, I cannot help you.”

  “I won’t lie,” I replied, as if she already had me wired up to a lie detector.

  Then she asked me a few questions about myself and my family before she cleared her throat and got to the point. “Miss Noelle says you seem to have an infatuation with her.”

  “Yes,” I said, spitting out the answer as if my life depended on it.

  “Can you stop having this infatuation?”

  “No,” I snapped.

  “Have you been fantasizing about her?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Do you know this is unhealthy?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Check,” she confirmed, making a large check mark in the air with her finger. “Do you mistake Miss Noelle for your mother?”

  “No!” I said.

  “Do you think she will give you better grades if you are nice to her?”

  “I never thought of that,” I replied.

  “Have you ever given her a gift?”

  “No,” I said, thinking that flowers taken from a grave site did not count as a gift.

  “You can relax,” she ordered. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “Are you sure?” I thought if I was slightly off my rocker it would make me seem more sympathetic to Miss Noelle, as if she had to be more sensitive to my special needs.

  “Believe me,” Mrs. Rutland said, jotting a few notes on a school health form. “Boys like you need a hobby. Something to keep your mind trained on other things besides Miss Noelle. I think a pet would help you.”

  “I’d like a pet,” I said. “But my parents won’t go for it. They said three kids and tadpoles is enough pets already.”
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br />   “You’ll just have to try harder to convince them,” she persisted. “Tell them you need one in order to focus your boy energy in the proper direction.” She ripped the health form off the pad and handed it to me. “This is your pet prescription,” she explained. “Once you get a pet, have your parents sign the bottom of this form and return it to me.” She stood up.

  “I still don’t think they’ll go for it,” I pleaded.

  “You either get a pet,” she said directly, “or I’ll send an official note home to your parents telling them I think you are immature for your age and need to be held back a year. And believe me, if you repeat fourth grade you will not have Miss Noelle.”

  I tried to say something else, but she cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled out, “Next!” There was a line of other kids waiting and I guessed my five minutes of mental health were up, which was fine with me.

  That night at the dining room table I decided not to tell everyone about my infatuation problem and pet prescription. Instead I said, “I think if I had a pet it would help me become more mature.”

  “Getting a brain transplant might help,” Betsy suggested.

  “You could get a new brain but I’m still not having a pet in this house,” Mom said. “They are dirty—filthy, really—and carry diseases. Plus we don’t have room for one.”

  “But it will help me be more mature,” I said, sitting up properly in my seat and crossing my hands on my lap. But she wasn’t listening to me.

  “And another thing,” she said. “No matter what your father intends, he never helps out with a pet. It always ends up being my responsibility.”

  She was right. When I was about five Dad came home with some kind of used hunting dog that had accidentally been shot and was now afraid of gunfire. He said it would make a great kid pet. It did. I pulled on its ears as if they were taffy. I rode it around the house. I made it eat bugs, and the dog never snapped at me. But Dad seldom took care of it. He didn’t walk it, exercise it, pick up after it, feed it, or take it to the vet for shots, and finally after Mom had given him a few warnings she gave it to a family down the street.

  I thought maybe Dad was still resentful of that and so I looked to him for help. “How ’bout it, Dad, can I get a pet?”

  “I agree with your mother,” he said without a second thought. “We don’t need a pet. It’s one or the other—kids or pets—and we have decided to keep you three rather than turn you in for a litter of pups.” He smiled as Mom nodded approvingly.

  “I can’t believe you agree with Mom,” I said. “You two never agree on anything.”

  “Well, we agree hand in glove on this issue,” he said. “No pets.”

  “So that means you will have to go,” Betsy said, pointing at me. “I’ll call the vet and see if she can find you a nice new home.”

  “I wish she could find me a new home,” I said, so hurt that I meant it. If someone had asked if I wanted to roll the dice and maybe end up living with another family, I would have taken the chance. What did I have to lose? A house trailer that didn’t fit us. A little swamp that smelled like a backed-up toilet. A tough older sister who patrolled the house like a hungry shark. A little brother who thought he was a genius but was really a nuisance. And parents who spent more time telling me what I couldn’t do than what I could do. I was ready to let the vet give me my shots and put my photo on her GOOD HOMES NEEDED bulletin board.

  But before I could get her a picture to put up, she got in touch with me first. The next day the phone rang and I picked it up.

  “Henry residence,” I sang into the mouthpiece.

  “Remember your duck, Quack?” she asked right away.

  How could I forget? She had made me clean smelly cages for two weeks as payment for flipping his feet around. “Yes,” I replied. “How’s he doing?”

  “His feet are fine, but he seems a bit depressed. I think he needs some help building up his self-esteem.”

  “What do you mean, building up his self-esteem?” I asked.

  “I mean, he is feeling insecure from having such a rough start in life and I think you should help build up his confidence.”

  “How?” I asked. I just couldn’t imagine what I’d have to do to make a duck feel more self-confident.

  “There’s a Pet Parade coming up,” she said. “You march Quack in the parade and if he is the best-looking pet, he wins a blue ribbon. And that would make him feel better, I’m sure.”

  “Would a duck even know he had won something?” I asked. “I mean, how does a duck know about self-esteem?”

  “Animals are very mysterious,” she said carefully. “Researchers are not yet sure what they feel and don’t feel. But one thing they have in common with humans is that they respond to love and attention, and that leads to better self-esteem.”

  “Well,” I said, “are his feet strong enough to make it through a whole parade?”

  “They are facing front and center,” she said, like she was captain of the duck brigade. “And they are fully healed and ready to waddle.”

  “Are you sure this will work?” I asked.

  “It can’t hurt,” she reasoned.

  “I have one little problem,” I said sheepishly. “My parents won’t let me have a pet.”

  “He’s not a house pet,” she said. “You can keep him outside in a plastic kiddie pool.”

  “We have a little swamp,” I suggested. “Will that work?”

  “Perfect!” she said. “You can think of him as an animal that you are reintroducing into the wild.”

  That sounded like a good science project for Miss Noelle. “Okay, I’ll take him to the parade.”

  “He’ll need a little work,” she said. “You’ll have to groom him.”

  “Sure,” I replied, not having any idea what went into grooming a duck for a contest. But I figured it couldn’t be much, and then he’d be gone.

  I was wrong. When I went over to her office to get Quack, he looked like he had been living in an oil slick. He was filthy. His lower beak was still scratched up from hitting the pavement, and there were two thick red scars where his little legs had been broken and twisted back into place.

  “He looks awful now,” she said, picking at his stubby gray feathers, “but you have a few weeks to get him ready.”

  “Weeks?” I said. “I thought I’d just take him to the parade, build up his self-esteem, and then he’d fly off with the other ducks. My parents won’t let me have him for weeks.”

  “You’ll have to talk them into it,” she said. “Because it will take weeks to artificially stimulate his winter plumage to grow so he’ll look plump and clean and healthy.”

  “How do I do that?” I asked, knowing I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “Every day you put him in the freezer for five minutes. That’s all it takes. Just five minutes of winter weather, and you’ll see, after a few days new feathers will start growing.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “My mother will kill me if I put a duck in her freezer. Please don’t make me do that,” I pleaded.

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said breezily, then got back to grooming the duck. “Just before the contest you’ll have to polish up his beak and feet.”

  “With what?” I asked.

  “Car polish,” she said. “It’s the best.”

  “And what about the scars and scratches?”

  “Wax crayons should help,” she suggested. “Don’t you know anything about grooming animals for contests?”

  I didn’t. It was all I could do to take a shower, brush my teeth, and comb my hair each day. I hadn’t polished my shoes all year, and now I was going to have to buff a duck’s feet until looking at them made you squint. And worse, I was going to have to sneak him into Mom’s freezer every day. If she caught me, she’d kill me. And if Betsy caught me, she’d never believe I was trying to get his winter feathers to grow. She would accuse me of torturing animals by freezing them to death. Even Dad would think it was
weird. And the only reason I wasn’t afraid of Pete is because if he caught me I’d threaten to put him in the freezer, and that would keep him quiet.

  “One more thing,” I said to the vet. “Could you sign this paper?” It was my pet prescription. “The school shrink wants me to have a pet,” I said.

  “I can see why,” she remarked. “Taking care of a pet might be good for your self-esteem.”

  Little did she know. Walking a duck on a leash in a public parade is going to crush my self-esteem, I thought, as she signed with a flourish. Next year the duck will have to walk me.

  On the way home I renamed him King Quack because I thought it would be good for his self-esteem to come from royalty. When I got him home I tied one of his legs to a small tree outside. I decided to take the direct approach with Mom and Dad instead of trying to be sneaky. As soon as I entered the house I looked at them and said, “I have something unbelievable to tell you.”

  “Try me,” Mom replied.

  I told them about King Quack and his self-esteem problem and how I was going to help him out with the parade. “We’ll only have him for three weeks,” I promised. “Only three and then he goes.”

  “We used to eat ducks,” Dad said. “Pluck ’em and grill ’em.”

  “He’s not the eating kind,” I said. I knew Dad was thinking that if we ate him it would save money. One less chicken to buy.

  “You can’t bring him in the house,” Mom said sternly.

  “I promise he’ll never step foot inside,” I said, knowing that I was lying a little bit because I had to put him in the freezer and, technically, the freezer was inside. But I would carry him.

  “Well,” she considered, “taking care of an animal is a maturing experience.”

  “And it will be good for my self-esteem if I do a good job,” I said.

  Mom leaned forward and gave me a kiss. “I think you’re right,” she said quietly. “But just for three weeks.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  After dinner Dad got me some chicken wire and I made a cage for King Quack out on the edge of the swamp so he wouldn’t walk or swim off, and so no other animals would hurt him.