Pay Attention, Carter Jones

by Gary D. Schmidt

“You think serial killers care a whole lot about word choice?” I said.

  So Billy Colt said he’d split with me. Then we turned in our one-paragraph descriptions, and Mrs. Harknet read through them with her laser teacher eyes and picked out three to read aloud to the whole class. As soon as she said she was going to do that, I knew she was going to read mine because the Butler made me write the thing over four times, you might remember, and who else in the whole sixth grade would have done that? So she read Patty Trowbridge’s paragraph about an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, and Jennifer Washburn’s paragraph about the aquarium in Chicago, and then she read about my visit to Liberty Park in New York City and how it was foggy and clammy and cold and we could hardly see anything until a wind came up off the river and suddenly it was clear and you could see the World Trade Center site and it was solemn (that word was the Butler’s suggestion).

  I guess you can tell the Butler wasn’t a serial killer, since he cared about word choice.

  “What wonderfully evocative connotations,” said Mrs. Harknet.

  “What wonderfully evocative connotations,” whispered Billy Colt—​who was probably mad about having to share his lunch.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  And then Mrs. Harknet said for tonight we all had to write another one-paragraph description, this time about our room. “The paragraph should show something of yourself,” said Mrs. Harknet. “You should do this not by direct statement, but by connotation.”

  “Your connotations are wonderfully evocative,” whispered Billy Colt.

  “Shut up,” I said. “I mean it.”

  Mrs. Harknet told us to get started on our homework.

  After that, science with Mrs. Wrubell, where we began our study of electrical ions—​which doesn’t sound all that exciting because it isn’t all that exciting—​and then PE, where Coach Krosoczka made us haul all the gray mats out of storage and into the yard to air them. “Cheap labor, boys,” he said. “Cheap labor.” The only thing that saved us from complaining was knowing that whoever was in seventh-period PE would have to haul them back inside.

  But hauling mats is hungry work, so by the time we were going to eat, I was really hoping Billy Colt had a good-size lunch.

  As it turned out, it didn’t matter.

  When we got to the cafeteria, kids were crowded around one of the tables, and when they saw us, someone hollered, “There he is,” and they all turned to look at me. You can imagine how weird that was. But then they parted, and I could see what they were gathered around.

  A white linen tablecloth was draped over an end of one of the long cafeteria tables. On the white linen tablecloth was a white china plate with a thin gold band. On the right side of the plate was a knife and a spoon on top of a white linen napkin. On the left side were two forks. There was assorted citrus fruit in a small glass bowl above the plate, a salad in another glass bowl beside it, and little cruets of oil and vinegar. On the plate was a chicken breast with baby carrots and mushrooms. Parsley, too. Garlic bread steamed on another white china plate. A bottle of sparkling water was ready to pour into a glass over ice chips. Beside that, a china cup of hot tea with milk and sugar. And in front of it all was a white nameplate with “Master Carter Jones” in dark calligraphy.

  “Dang,” said Billy Colt. “So tomorrow, can I split with you?”

  The Butler was really getting to be a pain in the glutes.

  I decided I might have to be wary after all.

  Whatever that meant.

  · 5 ·

  The Pitch

  The pitch is the twenty-two-yard playing field between the wickets, on which all the action between the bowler and the batsmen must take place.

  That night, my mother went to bed right after supper, and I worked on a one-paragraph description about my room that would show Mrs. Harknet something about myself not by direct statement but by connotation.

  By the time the Butler had helped Emily read a story about a bunny looking for a home, and another story about a bunny with golden shoes, and two chapters of another story about a bunny named Edward—​you get the theme here, right?—​my floor was covered with balled-up pieces of paper, which the Butler saw when Charlie dragged him by my door on the way to showing him her books. I could hear them in her room, him saying, “Are you fond of E. Nesbit?” and Charlie saying, “Who?” and the Butler saying, “We shall stop by the library. Now, about your eleven and twelve times tables . . .” And when the eleven and twelve times tables were finished, Annie dragged the Butler by my door on their way to practicing Annie’s spelling list of words that started with pr, and the Butler looked in at the mounds of balled-up pieces of paper and shook his head.

  I could hear them practicing, and after Annie’s progress providing and pronouncing practically every pr word in the language, the Butler proposed she prosper her study through prompt and profuse private attention to the list, and then he came to my room, where there was a whole landscape of balled-up pieces of paper.

  “Progress seems preempted,” he said.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “Apologies.” He chose one of the balled-up pieces of paper and spread it out.

  “I’m not very good at this,” I said.

  The Butler nodded.

  “I mean, who gives stupid homework in the first stupid week of stupid school?”

  The Butler balled up the piece of paper again. He picked up another, and he read it, and he balled it up again.

  “A teacher whose primary aim is instruction,” he said. “Are you meant to write about the antics of absurdly powerful characters in strangely colorful costumes?”

  “I’m meant to write about my room. I’m describing those posters.” I pointed.

  The Butler nodded again. “Much more suitable to discuss than the unlaundered debris—​which you will later attend to. But your sentences prattle on. Practicing economy, and preceding your verbs with some semblance of a proper subject, would—”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “Apologies. I wonder if your teacher would be more interested in the details that say something about you, young Master Jones.”

  “Exactly. I’m supposed to write about how my room says something about me.”

  “So you are writing about superheroes.”

  “Yup.”

  “Then perhaps,” said the Butler, “you might begin here.” And he pointed at the photograph of my father, Captain Jackson Jonathan Jones, standing in front of an American flag.

  “Or here.” And he pointed at my father’s beret from his first deployment in Iraq.

  “Or here.” And he pointed at the goggles that still had sand in them from Afghanistan.

  And stupid stupid stupid I felt everything in me start to stupid stupid stupid go stupid watery.

  “Write your first sentence,” said the Butler.

  I did.

  “Please,” he said, and he held out his hand. He took the paper and read it.

  Then he read it out loud.

  He read it out loud slowly: “My father is on the other side of the world, but he fills my room.”

  The Butler put the piece of paper back on my desk.

  “I predict this beginning will not suffer the fate of its predecessors,” he said.

  He left.

  It didn’t.

  * * *

  Okay, so the next day, I remembered my lunch.

  I was just being wary.

  But Billy Colt was disappointed.

  “So, the Butler isn’t going to make . . .”

  “No,” I said.

  “And there won’t be any . . .”

  “No,” I said.

  “You jerk,” he said.

  But at lunch, there was enough to share with Billy Colt anyway. It was almost like the Butler had planned for him, since there were two chive cream cheese sandwiches, two hard-boiled eggs, eight carrot sticks, and four small raisin scones.

  “Tell your butler thanks,” said Billy Colt. I think that’s
what he said. It’s hard to speak with a whole hard-boiled egg in your mouth.

  And Mrs. Harknet? She said my paragraph had plenty of wonderfully evocative connotations.

  Plenty.

  She told me I should email it to my father.

  I decided I would.

  * * *

  On Friday, the Butler picked us all up in the Eggplant after school, and for the first time, my mother wasn’t with him.

  “Your mother,” said the Butler, “is performing last rites for the Jeep.”

  “What does that mean?” said Emily.

  “It means the Jeep’s dead,” said Annie.

  “Jeeps don’t die,” said Emily.

  “Indeed, they do not,” said the Butler. “But they do finish their usefulness. Now, as it is Friday and gone three o’clock, I wonder if we might stop for a treat.”

  “A treat?” said Emily.

  “Yes,” said the Butler. “First, for Miss Emily and Miss Charlotte.”

  Emily and Charlie smiled the smiles they smile when they want to be pains in the glutes. But they were a little disappointed when the treat turned out to be a stop at the library to check out books by E. Nesbit for both of them.

  “What does the E stand for?” said Charlie.

  “‘Excellent,’” said the Butler. “Miss Anne next.”

  Annie did not smile her pain-in-the-glutes smile, but she was a little disappointed too when the next stop was Madeleine’s House of Music, where the Butler bought her a metronome.

  “Is this really a treat?” she said.

  “For all of us,” said the Butler. “And it is worth noting that rhythm properly practiced”—​he looked back at me, and I shook my head—​“is important in all parts of life, but never more so than in music.”

  “Thanks,” Annie said, not exactly like she was overwhelmed with happiness.

  “Young Master Jones next,” said the Butler.

  And I have to say, when we stopped at Marysville Sports Shoppe, the possibilities for me looked a whole lot better than an E. Nesbit book and a metronome.

  I mean, the words “Sports Shoppe” have lots of wonderfully evocative connotations.

  The Butler told us to wait in the car and he would inquire about the special order he had made. So we waited, and I said to Annie, “Special order”—​those words have lots of wonderfully evocative connotations too.

  I think Annie tried a little bit not to hate me.

  But when the Butler came back, he was carrying something long, and flat, and knobby at one end, and none of us could figure out what it was.

  “It is,” said the Butler, “what most everyone in the world, with the lamentable exception of the citizens of certain less civilized countries, would immediately recognize as a bat.”

  “That’s not a bat,” I said.

  “You see my point. Young Master Jones, it is a bat in every part of the world where elegance is cherished, where communal memory is honored, where mannered people reign.”

  “We’re mannered people,” I said.

  “Young Master Jones, last night you immersed your chocolate-glazed chocolate doughnut in your Coca-Cola.”

  “That’s how you eat a chocolate-glazed chocolate doughnut,” I said. “Obviously.”

  “And had I not intervened, you would have inserted the straw in your chocolate-flavored Coca-Cola into your left nostril.”

  Okay, that was true.

  He handed me the bat.

  “You are holding the wrong end, young Master Jones.”

  I turned it around. “Do I take the rope off?”

  “Twine, and no.”

  I looked at the bat. “Can you play baseball with this?”

  “Only if you were a savage.”

  “So what game can you play with it?”

  The Butler’s eyes almost closed. He began to smile. And he said, as if in a kind of trance, “The most lovely and sportsmanly game that mankind has yet conceived—​or ever will conceive.”

  I looked at the bat again.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “As you will remember, young Master Jones, mockery is the lowest form of discourse. Mockery of cricket, however, is akin to blasphemy, and will not be spoken in my presence.”

  The way he said it, I knew he wasn’t kidding.

  “So, what kind of wood is this?” I said, like I cared.

  “Willow,” said the Butler. “And tonight, you shall knock it in.”

  And if you don’t know what “knock it in” means, you’ve obviously never held a new cricket bat and had a butler give you a small bottle of linseed oil and a clean rag, and then rubbed the oil into the wood, and rubbed it in, and rubbed it in, and rubbed it in while he watched, his hands moving to show you how to do it, like he probably did it when he was a kid, like he was probably wanting to do it himself now. And then you bang a cricket ball all over the bat so the wood gets roughed up. The Butler thought it was some big rite or something that I should go through.

  But you know what? I wasn’t thinking of it being a rite.

  I was thinking how much my brother Currier would have loved this.

  He would have spilled linseed oil everywhere, but dang, he would have loved it.

  * * *

  By the way, after I finished lunch that day, I went to the school library and emailed my paragraph with wonderfully evocative connotations to my father. Then I checked my email on one of the library computers just before we left school.

  But that’s how it is when you’re deployed, right? I mean, maybe he didn’t get the email. Or maybe he was out on a mission. Or maybe it was really late at night there. Or maybe they were on lockdown or something and the base had gone dark because of an imminent threat.

  There’s a ton of reasons why he might not be able to write back.

  A ton.

  · 6 ·

  The Umpire

  The umpire is the ultimate arbiter of fair play, from the moment when the coin is tossed to begin the game through the final counting of the runs. An expert on the rules of cricket, the umpire brings to the contest fairness, close observation, and a sense of the game’s tradition.

  My mother was standing outside the open garage when we got home. The empty open garage.

  “Is the Jeep really dead?” said Emily.

  “I’m afraid so,” said my mother.

  “So are we going to get another one?”

  My mother closed the garage door, and suddenly I got it.

  There wasn’t going to be another Jeep.

  For the same reason we’d never gotten another microwave when the glass in the old one blew out.

  For the same reason I gave my bike to Annie and never got another one.

  For the same reason we had a computer so old it couldn’t play games—​which we didn’t have anyway so it didn’t matter.

  For the same reason Annie and Emily and Charlie got new sneakers for school but I didn’t.

  “Miss Emily,” said the Butler, “I will be your transportation for the present.”

  “You’re going to drive us in the Eggplant every day?”

  “I will drive you in the Bentley every day, Miss Emily—​until such time as young Master Jones has his own license.”

  You know how much it stinks to begin the first week of sixth grade with sneakers from the middle of fifth grade? You know how much tread they have left?

  “Carter can’t drive,” said Emily.

  The Butler raised one eyebrow.

  It really stinks.

  “Young Master Jones,” the Butler said, and he pointed to the Eggplant.

  “What?” I said.

  He walked to the door and opened it. The door on the driver’s side.

  “What?” I said again.

  “If you will get in, we will adjust the seat.”

  I looked at my mother. She shrugged, gathered the girls, and moved back toward the house.

  I got in. The Butler went around and got in the other side.

  “I’m twelve y
ears old,” I said.

  “Then there’s no time to lose. Do you know which is the accelerator and which the brake?”

  I nodded.

  “The clutch?”

  I looked around by my feet, and nodded.

  “And the gearstick?”

  Nodded again.

  He handed me the keys. “You begin by engaging the ignition.” He pointed. “That key, inserted there.” I inserted it. “Now turn and release as soon as the ignition has caught.” I did, and the Eggplant thrummed beneath me.

  Okay, so this didn’t stink. This was pretty cool.

  Emily, Charlie, and Annie had reached the front stoop. My mother had her arms around them. You know how in Ace Robotroid and the Robotroid Rangers some characters look at Ace Robotroid with their mouths opened up wide as caverns because of how amazing he is?

  That’s what Emily and Charlie were doing. Annie, not so much.

  “I don’t really know how to do this,” I said.

  “You are getting ready to put the Bentley into R for . . .”

  “‘Reverse,’” I said.

  “Excellent. Put your left hand on the gearstick.”

  I did. The Butler put his hand over mine.

  “Press down on the clutch.”

  I pressed down.

  “And now put the gearstick into reverse.”

  I did.

  “And using your right foot, gently press down on the accelerator and gently lift your foot off the clutch until you feel the engine bite.”

  I pressed down on the accelerator and lifted my foot off and felt the engine bite.

  “We shall discuss the meaning of the word ‘gently’ another time. Now, release the handbrake.”

  I did, and I felt the Eggplant purr in readiness.

  It was so cool.

  “Look back over your left shoulder. Good. Now lift up slightly on the clutch again, press down slightly on the accelerator, hold the wheel quite straight . . .”

  I did—​and the Eggplant rolled back along the driveway with the smooth power of a planet in its orbit.

  “If you continue turning in that direction, young Master Jones, you will reposition the row of hostas. Thank you. Exactly right. That should relieve your mother’s mind considerably.”