“His back legs aren’t crossed.”
“Only because they are too short.” He handed me the leash. “Shall I accompany you?” he said.
I shrugged.
“Literacy skills are in short supply in your nation, young Master Carter. You would do well not to contribute to the problem.”
“I should say hi to my mother first.”
“Your mother has an appointment at St. Michael’s.”
I looked at him.
“She never goes to St. Michael’s,” I said.
“Then today would represent an exception to the rule. Come along.” So we set off around the block, Ned pulling out in front because he was pretty eager. Obviously.
The day had gotten even colder during the bus ride home, and the wind was taking off more of the early yellow leaves and blowing Ned’s ears back. He half closed his eyes against it and trotted on.
“You had an extra practice, then?” said the Butler.
“Carson Krebs and me.”
“An estimable young man. Living in India for any time at all will make a gentleman of you.”
“I suppose,” I said. We passed the Ketchums’ azaleas, the flowers almost all gone now. The Briggses’ rhododendrons, the Rockcastles’ holly hedge, the Koertges’ petunias—their flowers almost all gone too. When we got to the end of Billy Colt’s driveway, we stopped for Ned. “Hey, how did you know about the extra practice?” I said.
“I come from the land of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” the Butler said. “I deduced.”
“No you didn’t,” I said. “You knew about it.”
The Butler, for once, didn’t say anything.
“You talked to Krebs.”
Still nothing.
“You told him to meet me after school. You told him to set up a practice so . . . what? So he could talk to me? About my father? You told him about my father? How did you even know?”
“Are you accusing, young Master Carter?”
“Deducing. And accusing.”
“Is it your intention to allow Ned to relieve himself against the last of these day lilies?”
“It’s where he always does it. Stop stalling.”
The Butler waited for a moment. Then he said, slowly, “You will remember, young Master Carter, that I have taken rooms with Mr. Krebs, and—”
“Geez, so you blabbed everything.”
The Butler turned to me. “I do not blab, young Master Carter. I inquire, I learn, and I inform.”
“You blabbed.”
“And the British lament the lack of subtlety and nuance in the American exploitation of our language. How could we have possibly come to that conclusion?”
“You blabbed.”
“I hoped to encourage camaraderie during a time when you might feel a tad lost.”
“You still blabbed.”
“And I hoped to encourage it with a young man who has been in a similar situation. I believed there might be a kind of understanding that would be healthy for you both.”
And I don’t know why, but as Ned stood there, trying to figure out which day lily he was going to finish off with, I thought I was going to bawl. Or maybe throw up. Or maybe both.
In the Blue Mountains of Australia, you can walk and walk and never have to think about anything except the trail.
In the Blue Mountains, all you hear is the sound of water dripping and rushing and falling.
Sometimes white birds screeching. Hunting calls, slithering, scrambling.
In the Blue Mountains, I walked with my father for miles, and we never had to talk. When we stopped for lunch, we each knew what to do. When we stopped to make camp, we each knew what to do. Once I almost showed him Currier’s green marble, but I didn’t. “I wish it could always be like this,” he said one dark night while I was trying to see stars between the high leaves of the eucalyptus trees. I went to sleep with him humming Beethoven.
The Butler took Ned’s leash. “It’s all right, young Master Carter. Things will sort out.”
“How?”
He looked at me. “You will learn to sort them.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I couldn’t say that since I was about to bawl.
“Shall we go on home, then?” said the Butler. “Your mother will be back from her appointment.”
We did, but when we went up the steps, just before we went in the back door, I turned to the Butler and said, “You still blabbed.”
And the Butler said, “So I did.”
* * *
It rained on Saturday—more sleet than rain—so there was no cricket practice. It rained on Sunday, too, so according to the Butler, there was nothing for it but to do homework, which Annie, Charlie, and Emily finished in about ten seconds. This, said the Butler, gave Annie the splendid opportunity to spend a trifle more time on her piano scales, to be followed by her rhythmic exercises with the metronome, and he exiled her to the living room for an hour.
For enjoying Annie’s exile too much, Charlie and Emily, the Butler said, were to spend that same hour in their room practicing archeology, hoping, he said, to discover the color of the carpet that lay beneath their layers of debris.
“It’s blue,” said Emily.
The Butler bent down to her. “I challenge you to prove it to me,” he said.
And now, I want it to be clear that I didn’t say a thing about enjoying Annie’s exile.
But it didn’t matter.
The Butler stood up. “And so to you, young Master Carter,” he said.
“To me?”
He opened my social studies book and turned a few pages. “You are studying the rebellion of the American colonies?”
“The American Revolution,” I said. “I have to do a report on the Declaration of Independence.”
The Butler sighed. “That does seem a tad dreary.”
“No kidding.”
“On the other hand—”
You know how writers sometimes say that someone’s ears perked up? It was almost like that really happened with the Butler. He smiled and his eyes sort of gleamed, and he said, “Your report might become of interest if you were to articulate the British perspective on that document and its rash call for independence.”
I looked at him. “Why would I do that? The British didn’t think there was any reason for the Declaration of Independence.”
“And how discerning they were,” said the Butler.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that there was no justification for such a declaration,” said the Butler.
“How about taxation without representation?”
“An irksome thing, no doubt—and one faced annually by the inhabitants of your District of Columbia, which is currently the seat of your American government. And yet you do not see those citizens setting up barricades and seceding.”
“So? How many people actually live there? Like, fourteen?”
“Certainly, young Master Carter, you are not seriously arguing that matters of truth and justice should be decided numerically?”
“Okay, how about the Boston Massacre? You think it’s okay for a bunch of soldiers to shoot down innocent civilians?”
“Hurting innocent civilians is the purview of terrorists. However, as your own John Adams proved at trial, soldiers defending themselves from a mob in the process of attacking them is hardly shooting down innocent civilians. And John Adams, I hasten to remind you, became your second president, proving that some Americans, at least, may be wise and good men and still rise to power.”
“And all the threats by the British government?”
“Did the British government detain American officials and subsequently tar and feather them? Did the British government board British merchantmen and ransack them, throwing their cargo into the harbor? Did the British government attack the home of the governor of Massachusetts, scattering much of the work that was meant to be published as the history of that colony? Did the British government—”
“All ri
ght, all right. But I remember who I am, which is an American, and I can’t write stuff like that.”
“Of course not, young Master Carter, because trying to think objectively in order to discern and express truth is so much less worthy than parroting centuries-old propaganda.”
I stared at the Butler. He was winning, and he knew it.
“How about Benedict Arnold?” I said. “Huh? How about him?”
“I am not quite sure how Benedict Arnold represents a justification of your Declaration of Independence, unless you mean that document to express a rationale for boorish and illegal behavior—which of course it does. However, in the cause of objectivity, I note that the patriot Benedict Arnold, having been scorned for extraordinary acts of valor by your Congress, chose for a representative pittance to turn over an American stronghold to rightful hands for the noble purpose of ending a war ruinous to two countries, though he understood the calamitous consequences to his personal safety and estate. Is this the gentleman to whom you refer?”
I looked at the Butler. “Remember how you blabbed the other day?”
The Butler looked at me. “Young Master Carter, might I suggest that you work to overcome the bias of your position and begin with words to this effect: ‘Due to the madness of the times’ or ‘The revolutionaries, in their arrogance’ or ‘Ignoring the many kindnesses of their mother country in their headlong ambition.’ I suspect any of those will do.”
“And those aren’t biased at all,” I said.
“Let me brew some tea to inspire you,” the Butler said. “That is, unless you wish to emulate your ancestors and throw all the Earl Grey into the swimming pool next door.”
“Blabber,” I said.
The Butler went into the kitchen to brew the tea. He walked through the living room first, though, and asked Annie if she might pause in her scales and play “Rule Britannia!” please. Fortissimo.
· 16 ·
A Dry Wicket
If the pitch has become worn, with loss of grass, it may be said to be a dry wicket. This surface usually allows for faster bowling, but it also benefits the batsman, in that the bounce is truer and spins are less effective. A wicket that is especially dry, however, may develop cracks that can be particularly useful to a clever spinner.
One morning in the Blue Mountains of Australia, I woke up before my father. I tried to get the fire started so I could maybe cook breakfast, but I could hardly get it going since the wood was so wet. I had to wait until he got up. He mumbled something and then he got it started like the wood was dry as could be, because that’s what someone who’s put in his time in the U.S. Army can do. He cooked bacon and powdered scrambled eggs and we ate them, and we didn’t talk much. We listened to the screeching birds overhead, and the water everywhere, and the wind in the high eucalyptus branches. Then we got all the stuff together. My father loaded most of it into his backpack.
That was our last morning in the Blue Mountains. I remember the air got the bluest it had ever been that afternoon, when we were climbing out. And then we got in the Jeep and drove back to the city.
I cried.
* * *
We still hadn’t told the girls.
I almost did the next Saturday afternoon. I almost did. I was standing with the Butler and watching Charlie at her soccer match, cheering her on as she ran up and down the field. Sometimes she kicked at a ball that was flying past her, but she never touched it. She mostly talked to one of the girls from Ellenville Elementary until they both just sat down and pulled at the grass.
When she came off the field, she asked, “Did we win?” and I hugged her hard.
* * *
On Sunday morning, the Butler and I took Emily out to breakfast because she had spent Saturday afternoon not at a soccer game but with the dentist, who had filled a cavity. So she wanted something special too now, and the Butler said we would go to a nice restaurant where they did not serve Ace Robotroid Sugar Stars, and Emily said she wanted Mom to come with us, but the Butler explained that she wasn’t feeling quite up to that and we should go along to leave the house quiet for her. So we went—I drove the Eggplant, by the way—and the Butler ordered steel-cut oatmeal with whole milk for all of us—“Shall we splurge and have cranberries on top?” he said—but after he ordered I said I had to go to the bathroom, and I found our waiter and asked if he could put Ace Robotroid Sugar Stars on top instead of cranberries. “Of course,” he said. And that’s what he did.
Emily squealed when she saw them. It had been a while.
“You have defiled the oatmeal,” said the Butler to the waiter.
“Orders are orders, bud,” said the waiter. He nodded at me.
Emily got up and hugged me. “You are my favorite brother,” she said. “Can you be my Favorite Person of the Week in school?”
I hugged her back.
The Butler did not leave a tip.
* * *
In the afternoon, we all drove to Spicers U-Pick Apples. I drove again, sitting on a cushion to give me greater height: “We would rather not attract the attention of uniformed officers who may not look kindly upon your automotive skills,” said the Butler. My mother sat in the back, pretty stiff, holding Annie, Emily, and Charlie with a death grip.
“Mr. Spicer,” said the Butler, “seems to be troubled by both a deleted apostrophe and an infelicitous abbreviation.”
“What’s infelicitous?” said Emily.
“The noxious result of not attending to one’s grammar,” said the Butler, “which, of course, will afflict no one in this automobile.”
We picked three bushels of apples, and then Emily and Charlie decided that picking bushels of apples was boring. The apple stand was selling Dreamsicles and they didn’t cost all that much, and the two of them had already helped pick three bushels of apples, so couldn’t they . . .
I went with Annie and Emily and Charlie to buy Dreamsicles, and after they’d finished getting orange hands and orange lips and—for Emily and Charlie—orange shirts, I helped the Butler carry the three bushels to the Eggplant.
The Butler drove home. He said the girls could sit up with him after a proper washing of hands and face—which they did in the water fountain—and then they squeezed into the front seat and he wrapped the seat belt around all three of them.
“That’s probably illegal,” I said.
“I have met the principal of Longfellow Middle School,” said the Butler.
“How’s that going to help?”
“One never knows how one’s associations may prove invaluable at unexpected moments,” said the Butler.
I sat in the back and my mother took my hand.
Her hand was cold.
“Do you remember the last time we picked apples?” she whispered.
I nodded.
“Remember how Currier . . .” That’s all she said. That’s all she could say.
We drove home holding hands, and the green marble was in my pocket, and all I could think about—all we could think about—was Currier biting into an apple one fall day not so long ago, and him finding a worm and spitting it out, and then holding up the apple in one hand and the worm in the other, laughing, the rest of us wanting to throw up.
“I bet you couldn’t find a worm, Carter,” he said.
“You win,” I said, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.
* * *
Monday morning, I told my mother I was going to articulate the British perspective on the Declaration of Independence.
“Really?” she said.
“Yup,” I said.
“What are you going to say?”
“That the Declaration of Independence was a marketing scam.”
A long pause. “A marketing scam?”
“Yup,” I said.
“Do you think Mr. Solaski will be okay about this?”
“It’s his assignment,” I said.
“How do you think everyone else in the class will react?”
“The
y’ll figure out I’m trying to think objectively in order to discern and express truth instead of parroting centuries-old propaganda,” I said.
My mother looked at me. “Sure they will,” she said.
Annie and Charlie and Emily and I got in the Eggplant to drive to school. Emily could hardly wait to get there because she was going on a field trip to the Marysville Fire Station.
“That will be splendid,” said the Butler.
Charlie was giving a report on E. Nesbit, who was now her favorite author in the whole world.
“Proving,” said the Butler, “that we are all capable of growing into discerning readers.”
Annie was trying out for the fifth-grade girls’ football team during her gym class.
“You mean soccer team,” I said.
“Football,” she said. Then she smiled at the Butler, who smiled back in the rearview mirror.
“Exactly right,” he said. “And young Master Carter, what does this day hold for you?”
“I’m about to tell my class that we shouldn’t have become independent.”
“Quite right,” said the Butler. “Think of the advantages if you had remained a colony and never taken up rebellion.”
“Like what?”
“You would not only have learned how to speak the language properly—as, for example, the avoidance of abrupt and inelegant sentence fragments—but you would have discovered the glories of cooperation while at the same time becoming aware of the calming properties of a good tea.”
“Probably they didn’t care too much about tea while they were fighting the American Revolution.”
“Perhaps in a rebellion, that would be so,” said the Butler. “In the midst of great anxiety and great sadness, it takes an honorable man to nourish the goodness around him, small and fragile as it may seem.”
“Is that one of those things you say that’s supposed to mean a whole lot more than it seems to mean at first?”
Pay Attention, Carter Jones Page 8
