by Jack Gantos
When Tack opened the door I jumped inside. They had air-conditioning now and if the door was open longer than two seconds his new mom pitched a hissy fit and yelled at us for letting the cold air escape.
“I have a favor to ask you,” I whispered.
“You can’t give back the cat,” he said. “Too late.”
“It’s not about the cat,” I replied. “I love the cat. Take me to your basement. I need to see the spot again.”
He was silent for a moment. “Haven’t you had enough?” he asked.
“I’m tougher this time,” I said. “I can handle it.”
“No you can’t,” he said. “Nobody, not even Jock, can handle the spot without …”
“Don’t say it,” I said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to hear the c-word.”
He turned and I followed him around to the kitchen, where he opened a door that looked like it might be a closet, only there were steps that led down into the basement. Tack flicked on the lights.
“You go. I’m staying up here,” he said.
I forced myself down the stairs. At the bottom I walked over to the far side of the pool table. The balls were spread out across the green felt where a game had suddenly stopped. Each ball had a fuzzy cap of dust on it. There, on the floor, on the smooth, pearly gray concrete, was a drawing of a cross and the words JIMMY SMITH. GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. LOVED BY ALL. I stood over the cross and took a deep breath. I gritted my teeth and stared down at the painted memorial and recalled the story. One night while playing pool with his buddies, Tack’s oldest brother, Jimmy, had opened a bottle of whiskey and drank it straight down like water. He set the bottle on the edge of the pool table, and then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed into a heap on the floor. He died instantly from alcohol poisoning.
It was about the saddest story I had ever heard, and I stood there and looked at the cross, then read the inscription. I knew that if I was going to be a man I was supposed to buck up and not cry. But I didn’t stand a chance, and within seconds the tears streamed down my face and left dark drops on the dusty floor. I sniffed and glanced up to see Tack standing next to me. He was sobbing, and that really got me going.
“Tell me again why he did it,” I said after a few minutes.
“Mom said he was a sensitive soul in an ugly, cruel world. But I read his diary. He said he was depressed and had a death wish.”
“Why’d he want to die?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Because,” Tack said gravely, “he was sick and tired of feeling sad all the time.”
My knees buckled when he said that. I knew exactly how Jimmy Smith felt, which only sent a fresh wave of tears rushing down my face.
“It’s just so sad,” Tack said, wiping his eyes on the tail of his shirt. “I can’t come down here without crying.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. Then suddenly I felt confused because both of us, two boys, were standing side by side and crying. It seemed as forbidden as if we were smoking cigarettes, or kissing. I knew if Betsy peeked through one of the narrow, ground-level basement windows and saw us down here, she would think we were sick and needed to be put into an insane asylum. And maybe she was right. Or maybe she was wrong. Because if it was okay to cry, then Tack was the greatest friend I ever had. But if all this crying was warped, then Tack was a bad influence and I should stay away from him. I didn’t know which. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, and he agreed.
“Hey, Tack,” I said when we had shut the door behind us and were standing in the kitchen, sniffling. “Have you ever punched anyone really hard?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Why?”
“Punch me,” I said, and jutted out my chin. “In the face.”
“Why?”
“I need to toughen up,” I said.
“Look,” Tack said. “If you want to toughen up, you need to suck it up. You don’t need to take a sucker punch.”
“Well, maybe you’re right,” I said, thinking that he was a great friend.
“Tell you what,” he suggested. “Come with me to my Boy Scout meeting tonight. We’re looking for new members. It’s just guys, and we’ll eat beans and sleep out in tents and cut deadly farts with the flaps closed and you’ll feel better.”
I remembered what Betsy had said about me not even being a Boy Scout, so I said yes, even though I had no real interest in smelling someone else’s gas.
That night I got off to a bad start. At the cookout I was afraid to tell all the scouts I was a vegetarian, so I took my two hot dogs and when no one was looking I fed them to the scoutmaster’s big dog. After that it kept following me around. I ate the hot-dog rolls loaded up with ketchup. Each time I took a bite the ketchup gushed out and smeared my face, so I looked like a cannibal.
When dinner was over we sat in a circle around a campfire. I wished we were in the woods instead of the scoutmaster’s back yard. I stared into the flames and thought about Indian gurus who could walk on hot coals. It’s all mind over matter, I said to myself. The same with crying. It’s all mind over matter. I just had to practice. I gave myself a crying test by thinking of sad images—a dog with a broken leg, a starving child, a war hero’s return to his family.
Before I could cry Tack leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t laugh at the scoutmaster’s name.”
Just then the scoutmaster stood up. He was thin but very muscular and wore a green uniform studded with colorful badges. “Let me introduce myself in case I haven’t met all the newcomers yet,” he announced. “My name is Sunny Winterbottom.” I tried to hold back a laugh but it snorted out through my nose. I just couldn’t help myself, and after I snorted I bent over cackling. I pulled the neck of my T-shirt up over my head, and the bottom out over my knees and laughed down into my belly like a sputtering lunatic tied up in a sack. And every time Tack jabbed me with his elbow and begged for me to be quiet I just let out another howl.
Sunny Winterbottom seemed to know why I was laughing. “Young man,” he commanded, “stand up.” When I peeked back up through the neck of my shirt he was pointing at me.
I stood and looked around. Everyone was staring back at me. I didn’t know any of them.
“Our troop is called the Wolf Pack and we don’t make fun of each other. We believe, like a pack, that we should stick together, fight for one another, hunt together, eat together, and bond together until death.”
I glanced down at Tack. He slowly shook his head back and forth. “I warned you,” he mouthed.
No sooner had he said that than I felt my face redden and the tears well up in my eyes. Dont cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, I scolded myself. Don’t you dare cry in front of Tack’s manly friends. I gritted my teeth and fought back. I concentrated on an image of the Dutch boy with his finger plugging up a dike filled with tears, and slowly I felt my tears recede.
“Now,” Sunny Winterbottom said to me, “tell us a story about how you expressed your manhood through the spirit of the wolf.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, and for a moment I wondered if he wanted me to say that I peed on car tires, dug up bones in the back yard, chased rabbits, and howled at the moon.
“A story,” he explained. “Where you did something manly.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to think quickly. “We had a vicious house cat that was always eating mice and so I put a bell around its neck and saved the mice but then the cat got hit by a train because the bell was so heavy it couldn’t get off the tracks in time.”
“Well, where is the manly part to the story?” Sunny Winterbottom asked.
“Saving the mice,” I replied, as my voice began to quiver.
Tack raised his hand before I slipped into a crying fit. “Mr. Winterbottom, sir,” he said. “The cat was an evil killer.”
Everyone cracked up, which gave me a chance to flick away a few stray tears. Then I sat down and listened as the other kids told incredible tales of calling on the spirit of the wolf to help them shoot de
er, skin alligators, survive boat sinkings, catch thieves, and win sports events. The whole time I sat there thinking that I was nothing but a pathetic crybaby.
After a session of arm wrestling, knot tieing, and edible-bug identification, it was time for bed. Mr. Winterbottom called me to his side. “I think you need some extra muscle,” he said. “You get to sleep with the mascot in your tent. The spirit of the wolf dog will enter your body during the night and in the morning you will be one of us.” He punched me on the shoulder and I stumbled away.
I crawled inside the tent. The dog was happy to follow because I had fed him earlier. Sunny lowered the flap and slapped the canvas roof. “Good night,” he said. “Sleep tight, and open your soul to the spirit of the wolf dog.” I could only think of the movie The Wolf Man and figured by the morning I would have fangs and hair all over my face and body and live in fear of a full moon.
The dog was huge. It took up half the tent. The air was hot and humid so I slept on top of my sleeping bag and the dog slept against me. It was a very friendly dog and in the morning it licked my face and woke me up and I thought, Well maybe the spirit of the wolf has entered me and I’ve toughened up.
I crawled out of the tent and went to the bathroom, which was in Sunny Winterbottom’s basement. There was a hazy mirror over the toilet and as I peed I glanced at myself. My hair was dirty and spread all over my head like swoopy icing on a cupcake. I didn’t look any more manly except for huge purplish spots all over my face and neck. Seeing them gave me a bad feeling. I reached up and touched one that was on the corner above my eyelid. It was something soft, like a warm raisin stuck to my skin. I began to pull on it but it wouldn’t come off. It was as if I was trying to pull a sandbur off of a sock. Finally it tore away and left a smudge of fresh blood where it had been attached. I held the purple thing in my hand and looked into its tiny red face. “Oh my God,” I cried out, “I’m covered with ticks!”
They were everywhere. I yanked another off from beneath my chin, and another from inside my ear. The dog must have had ticks, I thought, and now I have the spirit of the ticks. I lifted my shirt. There was one in my belly button. I didn’t dare look any lower. I turned and ran out of the bathroom. The tears were streaming down my face. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I hopped on my bike and raced for home. I could barely see with the tears in my eyes, but I didn’t care if I ran head-on into a tree and died.
When I got to the front yard Betsy was outside picking up the morning paper. I pulled my bike up next to her. I was sobbing and didn’t care what she thought of me. “I’m covered with ticks,” I said, hysterical and desperate. My arms flapped up and down as if I were on fire. “Help me.”
“Relax,” she said. “You’re overreacting. Go around to the shed and strip down. I’ll meet you there.”
I did, and took off everything but my underwear. While I waited for Betsy I checked my privates. I didn’t find anything. Betsy arrived with a pair of tweezers, rubbing alcohol, a book of matches, and a candle. “This is how we’d take care of ticks when I was in the Girl Scouts,” she explained matter-of-factly.
“This happened to you?” I asked.
She tweezed a plump tick from my eyebrow and held it over the flame of the candle. It swelled up then popped, and the blood sizzled like grease on the grill.
“If you sleep outdoors with animals it’s bound to happen,” she said. “No big deal. We used to have contests to see who had the most ticks. We’d line them up on the ground and squish them with our thumbs and they’d pop and we’d measure to see which one squirted blood the farthest.”
“Didn’t they make you cry?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “They are just ticks. No big deal. You pull them off, burn them, and go on your merry way. You’re just a crybaby is all. Even girls don’t get worked up over a few little ticks.”
“I think I lost a lot of blood,” I whimpered. “The ticks drained me. I feel weak.” I leaned back against the rung of a ladder. I touched my forehead to check if I was running a fever.
“I hope you don’t talk to your friends like this,” Betsy said. “Or you won’t have any.”
I didn’t dare tell her about Tack and me crying together over his brother’s death spot. She’d never understand.
When she finished she closed her eyes and made me take off my underwear and wrap a clean towel around myself. “Go take a hot shower and pull yourself together,” she said, exhaling with disgust. “If something really bad happens you’re going to be a wreck.”
After my shower I returned to my room. I unlocked my diary and it sprang open to the page where I kept the flattened cowbell for a bookmark. All I could think about was death and Jimmy Smith and I didn’t write a word. Instead, I cried all over the pages, and the paper puckered up as if it had bee stings all over. I snuggled across my bed with Miss Kitty II. As I rubbed her soft fur I kept feeling her skin for ticks but only found small clumps of dirt. I was still so upset, all my muscles twitched and tightened with cramps and I felt stiff all over as if I were slowly turning into plaster. I began to think about all those petrified Romans that were dug up at Pompeii. I had seen pictures of them in a book of ancient Italian ruins. There were people in the act of eating or working or doing hundreds of normal things that people do every day when suddenly they were entombed forever from the shower of lava and ash of Mt. Vesuvius. I thought that if I were suddenly solidified forever, right at this exact moment in time, people would someday dig me up and put me in a museum. A sign around my neck would read: A SAD, SAD BOY OF THE LATE 20TH CENTURY. Viewers would stare at my face and say, No wonder this kid didn’t survive. He was just lying around, hugging his kitty, crying, and feeling sorry for himself.
I felt miserable and needed to pulled myself together. When Dad had a tough day he had a drink. That was a man’s approach and maybe it would work for me too, I thought. I hopped out of bed, opened the door, and peeked down the hallway. No one was in sight. I heard Betsy in her room practicing ballet leaps from one side of her rug to the other. The entire house shook as if being struck with a battering ram. Pete was down at the Tiny Bubbles indoor pool with Mom. Dad was out playing golf with a construction tycoon.
“It’s now or never,” I said to myself. I bent over like a sneak thief, dashed into the kitchen, and opened the cabinet over the toaster. This is where Mom kept the cooking sherry. I figured it would do the trick. I grabbed the brown bottle, shoved it under my shirt, and hustled back to my room. Mom would not allow me to lock my bedroom door, because she said she never knew what I was “up to.” She was right to worry. I went into my closet and pulled the door tight. There was no light except from the crack under the door. I set the bottle down between my feet and turned the screw top. I lifted the bottle to my lips. Then I took a big breath and began to swallow in big, long gulps like a giant drinking the entire ocean. But the sherry would not go down my throat. It pooled in my mouth and boiled like molten lava until suddenly it erupted and I spewed it out all over my clothes. Tears from the burn of it in my throat ran down my face. I tried again to swallow the sherry but could only manage to get a trickle down. Finally, I made one last effort. I held my nose and drank whole mouthfuls, then set the bottle back on the floor.
In a moment I felt a little sick and dizzy, and afraid of what I had done. “Oh my God,” I suddenly cried out, “I’m going to die like Jimmy Smith and I don’t want to.”
I recalled the hand-painted cross and inscription on Tack’s basement floor—JIMMY SMITH, GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN, LOVED BY ALL. I imagined my own inscription—JACK HENRY. DROWNED IN A RIVER OF HIS OWN HOT TEARS. Maybe Mom and Dad and Betsy and Pete picked on me too much. Maybe I was a crybaby. But it wasn’t worth dying for.
I jumped up and ran from my closet and into the utility room. “I need to pump my stomach,” I muttered. “I want to live.” I plugged in the vacuum cleaner and stuck the rubber hose in my mouth. I flicked on the switch and sealed my lips around the nozzle. The pull of the vacuum took my breath away. I
felt my lungs quiver like leaves in a hurricane. My tongue flickered like a neon flame. But nothing came up out of my stomach.
I turned off the switch and took a deep breath.
Maybe the sherry was having a different effect over me. I no longer felt like a crybaby. Instead, I felt tough. Saving my own life was making me feel better already. I ran outside. The sun was blinding. The sky was polished with bright light. The electric buzz of heat made everything seem even more alive. I felt powerful and manly as I marched toward the tracks.
I was heading for Tack’s shallow hole between the railroad ties. He liked to lie down in it and let the trains pass over his body. He had called me a chicken because I wouldn’t try it. Now, it didn’t seem so dangerous. I lay down in the hole with my hands folded behind the back of my head. I closed my eyes and waited. I was so still bugs walked across my face. Before long the earth began to vibrate. I heard the wheels screech as the train turned the bend before coming my way. The ground began to jump, then a rush of hot air roared over me. I opened my eyes wide and watched the tons of speeding black metal pass a foot above my face. I knew that if I really wanted to die I just had to lift my head and, faster than a guillotine, I’d have it chopped off.
After the train passed I hopped up and dusted myself off, then walked down to the Kellys’ house. They had a mean pit bull on a chain that scared the life out of me each time I passed it. But not anymore. I stood on the other side of the road and flung frangipani pods at it. Each time I hit him, he growled and bared his teeth. “Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed like a robot as I walked toward him. “You are a mean dog, but I am meaner.” He tugged at his chain, his eyes glazing over with pure hatred. “Can’t get me, can you? You’d like to. You’d love to. You’d love to hurt me, bite me.” I stretched my neck way out. “Bet you’d like to get your teeth on this,” I said, and poked at my throat. “But you can’t, because you are chained up. Ha!”
He was foaming at the mouth and drooling and snapping his killer jaws at me as I turned and marched off in a goose step like a German soldier.
