by David Klass
17
The first meeting of the Teen Green Team takes place in a windowless basement room. I attempt to hide my excitement. This may turn out to be a highly valuable moment in my mission. The Lugonians argue persuasively that species Homo sapiens needs to be destroyed because they are ruining their planet and endangering millions of defenseless terrestrial and aquatic life-forms. But this club may provide evidence that the human race has recognized their folly and is now attempting to rectify the situation.
Six students trickle into the room. I only recognize one of them—Sue Ellen, from my biology class, with the frizzy hair. “Hi, Sue Ellen. I didn’t know you were interested in the environment,” I say.
“Don’t talk to me. I’m having a bad day and I don’t need a psycho pest buzzing around,” she responds.
I consider pointing out that it will be difficult to band together and save the earth with an attitude like that, but I keep the observation to myself.
The boy sitting nearest to me is so skinny his ribs appear to poke through his green shirt. He glances at the clock every few seconds. “Well, I guess this isn’t going to happen,” he finally says, and stands up.
At that moment I hear a click-clicking noise just outside. The door opens and an old man walks in leaning heavily on a metal rod with wheels. A tank of what I believe is oxygen is fastened to the bottom of the walking-support mechanism. The white-haired man moves slowly and sucks air with difficulty. He pulls the door closed and glances around at us. “Only six? Well, I guess that’s a start. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
He walks very slowly to the front of the room, sits down in a chair, and inhales some more oxygen from the tank. We all watch him gasp and wheeze.
“He’s gonna kick off right here,” the tall thin kid whispers to a fat boy sitting next to him.
“That would get us out of school for sure!” the fat boy responds enthusiastically. “Witnessing death. Highly traumatic. Worth at least three days of home recovery time.”
“You think so? Three days?”
“Definitely!”
The white-haired man takes out a handkerchief and dabs sweat off his brow; his hand trembles. Then he taps his fist on the desk. “My name is Arthur Stringfellow. I don’t recognize any of you, but that’s not surprising. They only let me teach one class these days.”
Stringfellow has bushy white eyebrows that seem to rise and lower for emphasis as he talks. “Let me tell you why I’m here. I guess you could see by watching me jog in that I’ve lost a few steps.” He smiles at us. “This will be my last year teaching at Muller. My condition is degenerative. I’m slowly winding down, like an old clock. That’s okay. I’ve had a good long run and I’ve enjoyed every tick and tock of it.”
“He is gonna kick off!” the tall boy whispers.
“Not right now,” the fat one responds. “Degenerative means it could take a while.”
“Not the way he looks, bud.”
Stringfellow doesn’t seem to hear this exchange of whispers. He looks out at us and manages a sad smile. “When you’re about to lose something, you appreciate it more,” he tells us. “Teachers don’t make a lot of money, but they get long vacations, and my wife and I have put those to good use. We’ve hopped around this globe a bit.”
The door opens. A new student stands half in shadow.
“The show’s already started,” Stringfellow wheezes. “In or out, please.”
Michelle Peabody steps hesitantly into the room. “I can’t stay for long,” she explains.
“Then stay for short,” Stringfellow suggests.
I try to catch Michelle’s eye. Did she come here because I said I was coming? She stays standing near the door and doesn’t look at me.
Stringfellow’s trembling hands move as he conjures something imaginary between his palms. It’s a sphere—the round globe of Planet Earth. “It’s a remarkably beautiful world,” he notes, looking around at us. “But it’s not mine anymore. I’ve got one step out the door. It’s yours. And you’re going to have to fight for it!”
I am disappointed to see that even a public-spirited and selfless man like Arthur Stringfellow links his hopes of saving the earth to violent notions of warfare. Nevertheless, his motives are admirable, and he appears to be a visionary. I wonder if all humans become less cruel and shortsighted as they near the moment of their demise.
Stringfellow peers around, as if to see what soldiers have enlisted in his little army. “I decided to start this club so we could do our bit,” he explains. “That’s why I’m here. What about the rest of you?” He looks at a boy in the very back of the room, with a skateboard on his lap.
“I got a D in earth science. My teacher said I’d get extra credit for coming.”
“So you don’t want to be here?” Stringfellow asks.
“You kidding? It’s a perfect skateboarding day.”
“Then get out.”
“But my teacher said . . .”
“OUT!” Stringfellow half rises and his explosion of anger is truly frightening.
The skateboarder darts through the door and vanishes. One gone, six left.
Stringfellow sits back down and breaks into a long fit of coughing. His anger has drained him. For a moment he seems to sink into himself.
“He’s history,” the thin boy whispers to his corpulent neighbor. “Get the pine box.”
“No, he’ll pull out of it.”
“Bet you a dollar he croaks right here.”
“You mean, right here right now?”
“Right here right now. You in or out?”
“In.”
“Show me the buck.”
“I don’t have it right now.”
“Deal’s off.”
Stringfellow finally manages to stop coughing and looks around at the rest of us. “Why are you here?” he asks Sue Ellen.
“I like cats,” she says. “I’ve got four of them.”
“Four cats gets you in the door,” he says.
The girl next to Sue Ellen is dressed all in black and has her face buried in her arms on the desk. She feels the old man’s gaze and looks up at him. “I’m Merrilee.”
“What brings you to the Teen Green Team?”
“I’m a vegan. I used to eat chicken and fish, but I gave those up. Now I mostly just eat raisins and nuts. Kids tease me. They call me Fruit Bat.”
“Fruit Bat, you can hang in our cave,” Stringfellow tells her, and moves on to Michelle Peabody, who is still standing near the door. “Latecomer, what’s your story?”
“Normally I have orchestra,” Michelle tells him. “But Mr. Simmons was sick today. I heard about this new club and I just wanted to check it out.”
“Why don’t you check it out from a sitting position?” he suggests.
Michelle Peabody hesitates and sits down at the desk next to mine. She is wearing white sneakers without socks, and I see that she has tiny freckles on her ankles.
Stringfellow moves on to the fat boy. “Young man?”
“Ralph Gurz. They cut down my tree.”
“Your tree?”
“This tree I always used to climb. In Beaverdale Park. They just sawed it down.”
“Who sawed it down?”
“I don’t know who. One day I climbed it. The next day it was a stump.”
“Welcome to the club.” Stringfellow nods and looks at the tall thin kid.
“Green is my favorite color,” the thin kid grunts. “That’s it?”
“It’s been my favorite color since I was five.”
“It’s my favorite color, too,” Stringfellow tells him.
Then he turns to me. “I hope we’ve saved the best for last. What’s your story?”
I return his look. “I would like to see if humans appreciate Planet Earth enough to fight for it.”
Stringfellow thinks my answer over. He peers back at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “That’s an interesting sentiment, but it’s very oddly expressed. You sound like you’re excluding
yourself from the battle.”
“He’s an alien!” Ralph Gurz whispers.
The old man shrugs. “There is no acceptable excuse for opting out of this struggle. I have the best excuse anyone could possibly have not to give a damn, and I still care. And if I do, you should, too. Yes?”
I look back at him. He’s staring at me intently as he sucks oxygen. He is clearly dying. The fact that he cares so much for his planet, even in his last days, makes a great impression on me. I have seen the worst of humanity—their cruel, senseless, and violent behavior. Do I not also have an obligation as the evaluator charged with deciding the future of the human race to explore their best and most selfless impulses? Put simply, how will I be able to decide if the species has redeeming traits if I don’t investigate and share its noblest struggle? “Yes,” I say.
“In or out?”
“In, sir.”
“Good.” He nods. “Now, we can’t reverse global warming here, or save the Amazon. But there’s a lot of good work we can do much closer to home. So we’re going to break up into pairs and pick different areas of town to work on. Cat girl, there are a lot of strays in the Swamouth Swamp. Do you and Fruit Bat want to tackle it?”
The two of them look at each other and nod.
“Ralph, since they cut down your tree, do you and Green Boy want to see what they left standing in Beaverdale Park?”
“Okay,” Ralph says without too much enthusiasm.
The thin boy mutters, “Whatever.”
“What about Mr. ‘I’m Not Involved’?” Stringfellow asks, turning to me. “Any notion of what might inspire you to give a damn?”
I think of Jason the bully getting ready to beat me up over an acorn, and of the Harbishaw paint factory spewing smoke. “I’ll take the Hoosaguchee River,” I tell him, and throw a quick glance at Michelle.
“Excellent,” Stringfellow says, noting the direction of my glance. “Orchestra Member, do you think you might find a little time to help him out?”
“I don’t think so,” Michelle answers. “We have a concert coming up and we’re practicing all the time.” She glances at me very quickly and then back at Stringfellow. “Anyway, that river’s practically a sewer.” She hesitates a few seconds more. “Well, I can’t promise, but maybe I can help a little bit.”
18
The Emerald Tavern is on Main Street. Above the entrance hangs a large green four-leaf clover, which some humans believe brings good luck. When I push in through the heavy door on my way home from school, I do not see many lucky-looking people inside.
The ceiling is low, the lighting is dim, and there is a musty smell. Sawdust covers the floor like a sprinkling of wooden snow. Eight men and two women sit on a row of stools facing a small TV, watching a baseball game and exchanging occasional conversation. Every now and then they raise glasses to lips in almost robotic movements.
The human tendency toward addictive and self-destructive behavior has been extensively observed, and now that I am inhabiting Tom Filber’s body I have felt its pull myself. Tom ate several bags of potato chips every day, and since taking over his body I have experienced powerful cravings for dehydrated potato flakes. I have resisted because chips—whether salted or barbecued—have little nutritional value. Nevertheless, I have woken up in the middle of the night thinking about ripping open a giant bag and stuffing handfuls in my mouth.
The ten adults drinking inside the Emerald Tavern are sipping a variety of alcoholic concoctions. They turn one by one to check me out. My father is not one of them.
A large man behind the bar who is cleaning glasses speaks to me. “We don’t serve drinks to kids.”
“I’m not thirsty,” I tell him.
“That’s Tom Filber’s boy,” somebody calls out.
“Is that right?” the big bartender asks. “Lookin’ for your dad?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s paying his respects to the marble altar.”
I do not understand this comment. “Excuse me?” I say. “Is my father involved in a religious ritual here?”
There are laughs from the customers.
“You could say that,” the bartender says with a shrug. “He’s kinda the high priest.”
One guy on a stool says, “I heard Filber’s boy has a screw loose.”
“Don’t be calling my son names, Simon LeGrange, or I’ll teach you some manners,” my father announces as he walks out of a bathroom. He stumbles and puts one hand on a chair to steady himself. “How did you find me here, Tom?”
“A kid at school said this was your office.”
There are louder laughs and even a few guffaws. The laughter of Homo sapiens is not merely a spontaneous physical reaction to something that is “funny,” as our observers initially concluded. I see now that humans also use laughter as a social weapon to humiliate and castigate.
“Show him your desk, Graham,” a man suggests.
“Do you have business cards for that stool?”
My father glares around at them and then looks at me. “What’s up? Did something happen to your mother?”
“No,” I tell him. “She’s fine.”
“Tough luck, Graham,” Simon says.
Dad throws him a scowl. “Come over here, son. Ernie, get him a cola.”
“We don’t serve kids.”
“Just bring him a drink.”
The bartender puts a Coke down in front of me and walks away shaking his head.
My father studies me and I look back at him. There’s a half-finished glass of whiskey in front of him. He reaches for it and then uncurls his fingers from the glass. “This isn’t my office,” he tells me softly. “I just like to stop by to relax on my way home from time to time.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
He winces. “Don’t call me sir. I’m your dad. You’re my son. You’re even starting to look a little like me, back in the day when I was a young rascal.” He reaches out and strokes my hair.
I blink away a tear. A particle of sawdust must have wafted into my eye.
“Hey, the Filbers are having a moment!” a fat lady a few stools away observes.
My father takes his hand away and studies my face. I think he sees the tear in my eye. “Why are you here?”
I can’t tell him that in order to evaluate humanity I have decided to join its noblest cause and I need some background information. So instead I say, “I thought maybe we could walk home to dinner.”
“Together, you mean?”
“Yes, sir. I mean Dad. Even if it’s turkey meat loaf again.”
He looks down at his drink a bit longingly and then straightens up. “I’m done, Ernie. My son and I are going to walk home to dinner together.”
“Sounds like a plan,” the bartender says.
Dad stands and tries to pull his jacket on, but he drops it on the floor.
“Talk about the blind leading the blind,” the fat lady says out of the side of her mouth.
I bend and pick up Dad’s jacket and hand it to him. He brushes sawdust off it, throws down a few dollars near his glass, and we head out of the Emerald Tavern together.
It is a cool October evening. The stores of Main Street are bustling with people. “So how’s life, son?”
It’s one of those very strange human questions that have no easy answer. “Better than being dead,” I finally respond.
“Fair enough,” he says with a smile. “Learning anything at school?”
“How to survive on Planet Earth.”
“Well, that’s worth the ticket, then. What about the girls? Starting to turn your head, are they?” He grins at me. “Guess you don’t have to turn very far.”
“Michelle Peabody is very nice,” I agree softly.
“Take it slow,” he advises. “There’s plenty of time.”
We walk together, side by side, past the Central Grocery, Sam’s Video-DVD Palace, and the Hey-Ho Dry Cleaners. His strides are longer than mine, but somehow our footsteps seem to ring out in unison. It’s
a surprisingly pleasant feeling.
I think for a moment of Ketchvar II, the last time I saw him on Sandoval. It was just before this mission. He’s six thousand years old now, which is near the limit for the life span of a Sandovinian.
After sharing the Great Squeak, we lay in the cool mud together, savoring the gathering darkness. “Good luck on your new mission, Ketchvar.”
“It will be a challenge to evaluate Homo sapiens. They are notoriously foolish and illogical.”
“A challenge you’re more than up to,” he assured me. “We’re very proud of everything you’ve done for the GC.” He rotated his body in the ooze and said quietly, “This may be your last mission for a while.”
I looked over at him. He returned my gaze from his eyestalk. “One day soon you may need to come home, to take over the Ketchvar burrow and set things in order.”
“That won’t be for a long time.”
“Not so long, Ketchvar,” he said. And the cheerful red twilight of Sandoval snapped closed into darkness.
Suddenly I hear a ferocious roar.
It’s a truck, honking at me. My father pulls me back on the curb just in time. “Are you okay, son? I asked you a question, and you didn’t even hear. You looked very far away. Too far to see that red light.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I was just enjoying the walk home. What was your question, Father?”
“Who told you the Emerald Tavern was my office?”
“Jason Harbishaw. He was bullying Sally.”
The light turns green but my father doesn’t walk. He just stands there. “Did he put his hands on her?”
“No,” I say. “He just called her some names.”
Dad nods slowly, and we cross the street. We are soon walking away from the town’s business district, on a tree-shaded lane. “His father was a bully, too. Not at first. We were pals. But he had a mean streak that got worse over time till he turned all mean from nose to toes.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“What happened?” my father repeats. “Nothing much. Only that he robbed me blind. Made his fortune and ruined my life. Your life. All our lives.” Dad spits onto the street. “Drive up there sometime and see for yourself.”
