The Mighty Quinn

by Robyn Parnell

  Josh quivered in anticipation of the chance to mock someone. “Maybe she’s a fat-Buddha-statue lover, like Quinn’s grandpa.”

  “What?!” Quinn sputtered. “My grandpa’s not …”

  “A fat Buddha? How redundant.” Neally patted Josh’s shoulder, as if calming a hyperactive poodle she was trying to paper-train. “Translation, Josh: redundant is the ultimate ‘duh.’ When have you ever seen a skinny Buddha?”

  “Bud-duh!” Tay said. “Excellent.”

  “So, Neally, why don’t you say the pledge?” Sam looked around at the other kids, his eyes composed and curious. “I’m just asking. I don’t care if you do or not. But if you were, say, from another country, where they don’t …”

  “She’s from Washington state, not another country,” Matt persisted.

  “Or maybe some kind of different religion?” Sam offered.

  “Yaweh’s Disciples?”

  The group turned in unison to look toward the musical voice that floated up from the end of the line. No one had noticed that Lily L’Sotho had joined the four square line. Lily looked startled by all the eyes trained upon her, and for a moment it seemed that she might bolt like a deer and run for the trees.

  “Huh?” Josh looked around the schoolyard. “Where’s Arturo? Where’s Janos?”

  “Zip it.” Tay crooked his arm, as if he were going to put a headlock around Josh’s mouth.

  Lily’s chin dipped, and she fingered the hem of her skirt and did not make eye contact with the others as she spoke. “There are people who take no oaths.” She paused, searching for the right words. “Their faith says make no pledge, only to their god.”

  “I’ve read about that,” Neally said. “There are groups like the Yaweh’s Disciples …”

  “Oh yeah, Joey’s disciples,” Josh said. “What kind of church would …?”

  “It’s pronounced YAW-weigh,” Neally said. “Yaweh’s Disciples. Is that your parents’ church, Lily?”

  “No.” Lily smiled bashfully at Neally. “My family, we are not them.”

  “Oh, those people.” Tay grimaced. “They go from house to house and knock on your door. They try to get you to invite them inside, and you don’t even know them.”

  “Why would anyone want to talk with someone they don’t know?” Quinn asked.

  “Salespeople talk to people they don’t know all the time,” Sam said. “Ever done a fundraiser for soccer or Scouts?”

  Quinn shot a dirty look at Sam, who knew full well that Quinn was not a Scout and had never been on a sports team.

  “We’ve had them come to our street,” Sam said. “People from other churches too. If my sister sees them coming she pulls down the window shades and says we can’t answer the door.”

  “They say they’re not selling anything,” Tay said. “But my mom says they try to get you to buy their magazine that says their church is right and yours is wrong.”

  “They’re the ones who need something that tells the truth,” Matt said. “If they came to our house, my dad would set them straight in no time.”

  “That would be so much fun to watch!” Neally clapped her hands. “Like those wrestling matches on TV!”

  “You watch wrestling?” Sam laughed.

  “No. But I’ve read about it. My parents say we’re not sophisticated enough for such …” Neally held her fingers up in the quotation sign, “‘high class entertainment.’ But I bet they’d let me watch ‘My God Can Head Slam Your God.’”

  “There’s only one God.” Matt clenched and unclenched his fists. “You shouldn’t make fun about stuff like that.”

  “Shouldn’t?” Neally flipped her hair off her shoulders. “One person shouldn’t tell another person what to talk about.”

  “This is so boring,” Tay yawned.

  “God is not boring.” Matt’s face turned the color of Ms. Blakeman’s chalk.

  “Look, no one’s on the court anymore—we even bored the server out of the game.” Tay gestured toward the empty four square court. “Why is anyone talking about this stuff; who cares? Does this look like a church?”

  “It sure doesn’t look like a four square game,” Sam piped up.

  “Superb point, Mr. Washington,” Neally said. “C’mon, we’ll double up, everyone can play. Lily, would you be in my square? You and I could beat ’em all, standing on one leg.” Neally raised her foot and hopped toward Lily.

  Quinn ran to the server’s square with Sam. “Quick,” he called back to the others, “before the sixth graders come back.”

  Sam bounced the ball toward the students standing in line. Matt swung his foot, as if to kick the ball, and Neally tripped over his shin and fell face-first to the blacktop. When she lifted her head, two bright scarlet rivulets streamed from her nose.

  Quinn felt as if everything soft and liquid was draining from his head. He ran to Neally; the other kids froze for a moment, as if they’d been planted in the blacktop. Quinn saw from their expressions that he wasn’t the only one who knew exactly what had just happened.

  “Whoa!” Matt stepped in front of Quinn. “Watch where you’re going. You okay?” Matt reached out to Neally, who ignored his outstretched arm and tried to stand up on her own. She staggered, reached out to steady herself and grabbed Matt’s arm, accidentally pushing up the sleeve of his jersey.

  “Uh!” Matt flinched.

  Neally saw a large, purple-green bruise on Matt’s forearm. She pulled her hand back, and Matt quickly pushed his sleeve back down.

  “Tay, help me get some wet paper towels.” Matt began issuing orders. “Sam, Josh, go get the school nurse, what’s her name?”

  “Nurse Parker,” Sam said.

  “No, it’s okay,” Neally protested, “I’ll be fi—bleeackkkk.” Neally spit out a clot of blood that had dripped into her mouth.

  The boys ran off on their rescue errands. “Help, someone help us,” Lily whispered, as she anxiously looked around the schoolyard. She fumbled through her skirt pocket and found a wad of tissues, which she handed to Neally. “Be like this.” She tilted her head back, indicating to Neally to do the same. “I will go for help, for Ms. Barnes.” Lily ran off in search of the playground supervisor.

  “Ms. Barnes, that’ll be a big help … acck gack.” Coughing and spluttering, Neally lowered herself to the blacktop and pressed the blood-soaked tissues against her nostrils. “She’ll blast her whistle, and my nose will be too scared to bleed.”

  Quinn sat down beside Neally. As long as he could hear her talk and not have to look at her nose, he knew she’d be all right. He knew he’d be all right.

  “Are you really okay?” he asked.

  “I’m a little dizzy … It’s just a bloody nose, and not even my first. But did you see that?”

  “I know.” Quinn shook his head in disgust. “Matt tripped you on purpose.”

  “No, not that. I mean when I grabbed his arm—that huge bruise on Matt’s arm. Where’d he get a bruise like that?”

  “He’s a sports jock,” Quinn said. “Haven’t you heard to the nth time that his soccer team is going to the league finals?”

  “Soccer players get bruises on their shins, not their arms,” Neally insisted.

  “And their legs, sometimes. On the top part.”

  Quinn and Neally looked up at the sound of Teena’s spacey voice. Where did she come from? Quinn wondered. He was certain he hadn’t seen her standing in the four square line.

  “Ack; yucko.” Neally cleared her throat. “I swallowed some of this gunk. Excuse me.” She spit a bloody wad into the tissues.

  Quinn rummaged through his pockets, but found no tissue. Teena reached into her own jacket pocket, removed a piece of a crumpled cafeteria napkin and gave it to Neally.

  “Thanks, Teena,” Neally said.

  “Uh-hum,” Teena mumbled.

  “Are you going to tell on Matt?” Quinn asked Neally.

  “Why bother?” Neally slowly pushed herself to her feet.

  “You should tell.”
r />   “You said it before,” Neally said. “Matt never does anything when a grownup is looking, so it’s my word against his.”

  “Not just yours—I saw it. So did everyone.” Quinn glanced at Teena. “I’d tell the truth.”

  Teena turned around and walked a zigzag line toward the tetherball courts, spinning her hair and humming the There was an old lady who swallowed a fly song.

  “Okay, so we’ll need a more reliable witness.” Quinn sighed. “She’s such a … lurker. You don’t even notice her, and then she’s just there.”

  Neally put her hand on Quinn’s shoulder. Neally was always touching people, putting her hand on your elbow or patting your arm, in a nice or joking way. But this time Quinn felt like crying when he looked at her. She radiated gratitude, but there was another mood, something else that seemed so out of place in those typically indomitable, cosmic green eyes: resignation.

  “I’m sure about you. About you telling the truth. But are you sure about everyone else?”

  “You’re not going to tell anyone?” Quinn knew the answer to his question, and wondered why he bothered asking it. “Someone has to; Neally, oh, c’mon. You have to tell.”

  Neally shook her head. “Look, even if we report him and we both know it’s him … argh! Don’t you get it? There we’d be, maybe three of us instead of just him and me, but he’d still think he’d won, because he got us there, with him. Besides, the principal would probably make all of us go to those conflict management sessions after school, which are so lame.”

  SSSSSSSQQQQQQQQQUUUUUUURRRRRK!

  Sam, Lily, and the school nurse ran toward the four square court. Ms. Barnes marched thirty feet behind them, swinging her arms forcefully, her whistle clenched between her teeth. “Slow down, all of you! That goes for you too, Annie Parker!”

  Nurse Parker glanced back in astonishment but did not slow her pace. Ms. Barnes continued to yell. “Y’all think you’re going to help by tripping and bloodying your own noses?!”

  “Here comes Rescue 9-1-1,” Quinn said. “I feel safer already.”

  “Nice one. Think I ought to go for it? After all, they went to so much trouble. Ooo-wooooh.” Neally clutched her bloody tissue to her nose, heaved a dramatic, damsel-in-distress sigh and sank back down to the blacktop.

  18

  CLICK ON ONE OF THESE

  “My turn to wipe the table!” Mickey took her dishes to the sink and grabbed a wet dishcloth.

  “Thank you for doing your chores without being reminded.” Ms. Lee brought her plate to the sink. “Your father and I appreciate that.”

  “We certainly do,” Mr. Andrews said. He got a dry dish towel and followed behind Mickey, wiping up the water she dripped on the floor on her way from the sink to the table.

  “Actually, it’s her turn to take out the trash,” Quinn said. “It’s my turn to clear the table. She doesn’t like doing the trash, so she’s …”

  “I do so like the trash! And I do it the best.” Mickey dropped the dishcloth on the table and marched back to the sink. “I could be a garbage man when I grow up. But I’d rather be a splinter doctor.” Mickey took the trash out to the garage, giving herself a pep talk along the way. “There are lots of splinters in the world. A splinter doctor would never run out of patients.”

  Quinn wiped the table while his father dabbed water spots off the floor and his mother loaded the dishwasher. “May I do the rest of my computer time now?” Quinn asked. “I’ve got a little more than ten minutes left. I did some of it after school.”

  “That’s fine,” Mr. Andrews said. “It’s already on; please don’t close any open documents.”

  Quinn inserted the Fearless Froggie disk into the office computer. Although he’d been playing the game every day after school for two weeks, he was still at Level One—not one of his frogs had crossed the highway without getting squished. Quinn was determined to get to the next level, where your frog had to ford a river without getting chomped by an alligator, smacked by an angry beaver’s tail, or speared by a heron’s beak. Sam also had Fearless Froggie on his home computer, and claimed to have made it to Level Three, where frogs compete in a Fearless Froggie Olympics, complete with Froggie pole vaulting and Froggie bobsledding.

  Mickey and her mother quietly entered the office. Mickey stood behind Quinn and their mother leaned against the doorjamb as Quinn deftly maneuvered his game’s control pad and guided his frog across a busy five-lane, 95-miles-per-hour expressway. His frog dodged a motorcycle, an ambulance, a postal van, a weaving furniture delivery truck, two speeding sports cars full of shrieking teenagers, and three state trooper cars in pursuit of the trucker and the reckless teens, before it disappeared under the wheels of a elderly man’s Cadillac driving 25 miles per hour the wrong way in the fast lane.

  “Ah, foof!” Quinn sputtered.

  “You’re still not very good,” Mickey said.

  “Mickey,” Ms. Lee said, “that’s not nice.”

  “I know,” Mickey sighed. “I just wanted to remind him.”

  Ms. Lee rubbed her eyes. “Dessert, anyone? Nothing fancy, just cereal and milk tonight.”

  “I didn’t get to do my computer time today,” Mickey said.

  “It’s all yours.” Quinn offered the chair to his sister. “Have a squished frog for dessert.” He followed his mother back to the kitchen, where his father sat at the table, pouring milk into his bowl of cornflakes.

  “Can I have …”

  “May I,” Mr. Andrews corrected Quinn.

  “May I have graham crackers and milk instead of cereal?”

  “Of course.” Quinn’s mother removed a box of graham crackers from the cupboard, and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “My grandmother’s favorite dessert was cereal,” she said dreamily. “She said she’d rather have a bowl of cereal for dessert than a hot fudge sundae. I never saw her eat cereal for breakfast, not cold cereal. She’d have oatmeal on Sundays, before church. Other than that, it was two poached eggs over rye toast, every morning.”

  “Have we ever had any of those Yaweh’s Disciples come to our house?”

  Mr. Andrew paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Interesting conversational transition,” he said.

  “Yes, we have, but it was some time ago.” Ms. Lee brought the graham crackers and two more cereal bowls to the table and rested her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “When was the last time you remember them stopping by here?”

  “It’s been two years, at least.”

  “How come we don’t go to church?” Quinn pushed his graham crackers around his bowl with his spoon, mushing them into the milk. “Mom’s grandma did. I’m just wondering.”

  Quinn carefully observed his parents. His dad grinned at his mom, who looked at his dad with the face she made when they played Scrabble and she accused him of making up words.

  “Actually,” Mr. Andrews said, “both your mom and I were raised in churchgoing families. Well, it was another generation back, in your mother’s case. Grandpa and Grandma Lee are not churchgoers, as you know.”

  “Yes, my mother’s parents went to church,” Ms. Lee said. “To the church of We’re Right And Everyone Else Is Going to H-E-double—”

  “Your mother,” Mr. Andrews interjected, “had a few negative experiences while visiting her grandparents’ church, shall we say.”

  “Shall we say,” Ms. Lee sniffed.

  “But you did like the singing, as I recall.” Mr. Andrews looked hopefully at his wife and winked at Quinn. “You know how she loves to sing.”

  “I don’t need to sit in a building to sing. You can say amen to that.” Quinn’s mother had a spark in her eyes and a lilt to her voice. “I’m sorry, Quinn. I don’t mean to be flippant.”

  “That’s okay.” Quinn tried not to smile. “You can be flippant all you like, ’cause I don’t know what it means.”

  “It’s one of those words Neally would look up, isn’t it? I meant I’m not trying to ignore your question. My reasons …”

 
“Our reasons,” Mr. Andrews softly but firmly added.

  “There are many reasons, some complicated, some clear-cut, why we don’t go to a church, any church,” Ms. Lee said. “Some of it is because we don’t like the format, the way churches do things. We don’t find it helpful, or interesting or meaningful. Some of it is because much of what is said and done by churches we simply don’t think is true.”

  “Of course, there are other people who think differently,” Mr. Andrews said. “They go to their church or temple, their mosque or meeting house, because they do find it meaningful.”

  “Or because somebody makes them go,” Quinn said. “Like Tay. Even Sam and …” Quinn’s knee began to bounce under the table.

  “Go on,” Quinn’s mother said. “We’re listening.”

  “Lot of kids at my school go to lots of different churches. But when they talk about it, it’s about how their parents made them go to Sunday school and youth league and so they had to miss soccer, or how they have to watch boring videos and do stupid crafts. David Greene missed his class’s skate party because he has Hebrew school every weekend and can’t miss even one Saturday.”

  “I think I’m coming up with some kind of disease.”

  Quinn and his parents turned to look at Mickey, who stood in front of the open refrigerator, looking deeply concerned. She held her hand over the light on the inside of the refrigerator door, and the skin between her thumb and forefinger glowed red.

  “It drives me nuts when she creeps up like that,” Ms. Lee whispered to her husband.

  “Cereal or graham crackers?” Mr. Andrews asked Mickey.

  Mickey did not answer, but joined her family at the table. “Peppy won’t run on his wheel.” Mickey stared pensively at her parents. “He might need hamster vitamins. When I grow up, I’ll be a veterinarian for two hours a day, and a barber for the rest. And also have a museum.”

  “What happened to being a splinter doctor?” Quinn asked.

  “Eh.” Mickey flicked her hand as if to shoo a fly off her head. “May I have more computer time for dessert? My frog made it across all five lanes.” She smiled at Quinn. “My sweet brother, you know how I feel when I’m good at something, darling? I get really rattley.”