I could tell how sincere she was, which made it worse. I felt like a jerk. “Never mind. It would be worse feeling guilty and self-centered than having him clinging around.”
We dropped the subject and she took off in the station wagon. After Nicky came out back, we worked on the bike for maybe two hours. We cleaned the plugs and sprayed out the inside of both carburetors with gum-out.
The net result was, we got it running, for about twenty minutes. It was running real rough and burning oil, but we drove it to the orchard on the other side of Birkelbaw’s garden market. We both got to drive a little bit.
On the way back, it conked out several blocks from Barb’s house. We tried for quite a while, but we couldn’t get it started again. Nicky pushed it over on its side and started kicking it.
I was completely disgusted with him. “I tried to tell you how much work it would be to get it running right. There’s a lot more to it than we did today.”
He just kept kicking the bike. I couldn’t see any reason to be polite to him. I didn’t lift a finger to help him, I let him walk it back by himself.
After that, he was in a heavy-duty sulk all the way home.
One day during the last few weeks of school, I had my story finished for the competition, so I turned it in to Mrs. Bluefish. The idea was, you were supposed to turn your story in to your English teacher and then the teachers would send the stories on to the contest judges. Probably the plan was to have the teachers weed out some of the stories that were real losers. The actual judging was going to be done during summer vacation.
The name of my story was “Mask.” I worked pretty hard on it, and typed it all up with no typos. It was a quality piece of work, if I do say so myself. The story line went like this: There’s this guy named Glenn Carbon who wears this mask all the time, everywhere he goes. He’s a computer programmer in a big company. The mask is one of those rubbery types that fits very snug over your whole head and even covers part of your neck. When Glenn Carbon was in high school, he only wore the mask part of the time, but now he wears it all the time. He wears it to work, he wears it when he goes shopping, and he even wears it to bed, because if he gets a phone call, he wants to have the mask on when he’s talking on the phone.
Even though he has this one weird trait, he is very excellent at his job.
One day the company has an office party, and Glenn Carbon gets drunk. He gets so drunk, he passes out. Well, everyone else is drunk, too, so while he’s passed out, the other people decide they will take off his mask to see what his face looks like. They discover that his real face looks exactly like the mask. In fact, you have to look real close to be certain that he’s not still wearing it. Well, this seems close enough to the edge that it sobers everybody up. When Glenn Carbon comes to, he discovers that his mask is gone. He freaks out and starts throwing computers out the window. Nobody can quite understand the freak-out, because his face actually looks the same, with or without the mask. But he can’t handle it, so the authorities come and take him away to a mental institution, where he lives out the rest of his days in a catatonic condition.
When I handed in the story to Mrs. Bluefish, she kept this stern expression on her face and said, “Thank you, Floyd. I hope you’ve written a nice story.” She seemed her usual edgy self, as you could see her jaw muscles working.
What she meant by a nice story is the kind Annette Belfoglio always turns in, where this Red Cross nurse takes care of a wounded soldier, they fall in love in the hospital, and after the war is over they get married. Sometimes Annette changes the details a little bit; instead of a Red Cross nurse, it is a nurse in a city hospital, and instead of a wounded soldier, the man is a policeman or a fireman injured in the line of duty.
After school, Nicky wanted to know if we could go back to the garage and try to get the bike running again. With my story finished and handed in, I was feeling altogether mellow, so I said yes.
When we got to Barb’s house, she wasn’t home. It didn’t seem like she’d mind if we did a little work anyhow, so we went around back. In the backyard, I had to do a doubletake.
On the ground between the house and the garage was a huge log with a blue ribbon tied around the middle of it. I read the card that was attached to the blue ribbon:
I got the log, now
you make the boat.
“What’s the story?” asked Nicky.
I was impressed with how straight and regular the log was. I told Nicky, “Sometimes Barb and I talk about Indian customs. I showed her this book once with pictures of the steps involved in making a dugout canoe.”
“So?”
“So, I told her I’d like to make one sometime.” I got a tape measure from the garage and measured the log. It was fourteen feet long, and thirty inches in diameter. It was well seasoned, but it didn’t have any rotten spots. As near as I could tell, it was cottonwood.
I tried to remember when anyone had done anything this nice for me, anything that took so much extra effort. Maybe the time Mr. Gibbs gave me a rebuilt lawn mower engine to tinker on. Maybe not. Maybe never. But I knew for sure it wasn’t the kind of thing you could let yourself dwell on.
“If you’re gonna make a boat out of this thing, you’re lookin’ at a lot of work,” said Nicky.
“True, but the log couldn’t be any more perfect. I wonder where she got it.”
“What’s the big deal? If you want a log, you cut down a tree.”
“It’s not that simple. Not to get a log with all the right elements. Her friend Nolan, the baseball coach who lives on the farm, she probably got it from him. He lives out in the country and he would have a truck to haul it.”
“If you say so.” Nicky seemed bored. He got Barb’s house key from the garage and asked me if I wanted a Pepsi.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go inside when she’s not home.”
“She left us a key, right? She showed us where she keeps it.”
He came back out with two Pepsis. He started pestering me to go to work on the motorcycle. I apologized for going back on my word, but I told him I hadn’t known the log would be here, and I really wanted to start working on it. I told him he could work on the bike for a while by himself. “If you run into anything that’s tricky, like over your head, I’ll give you a hand.”
That seemed to satisfy him. He went to the garage.
Since it was just me and the log now, I had to do a little brainstorming. There was a long crack down one side of the log, sort of like a natural seam. I needed some wide chisels and a sledgehammer, but I was in luck because I knew the stuff was in the garage.
When I went in there, Nicky wasn’t working on his bike at all. He was sitting on it. He was wearing a baseball cap turned around, and humming “Born to Be Wild.” There was no telling what pictures were in his brain.
I shook my head and got the tools. I started to work. I wasn’t at it too long when I saw Nicky out of the corner of my eye. He was leaving.
I ended up working on the log right up until dark. Barb got home about 5:30 and asked me if I wanted some supper.
“No, thanks, I’m on a roll. I really appreciate the log, though. It’s real nice of you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Would you do me a favor and call Gates House? I have to have permission to stay past supper.”
When she came back out of the house, she had a bag of pretzels. “I’ve been on the phone with Mrs. Grice.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said yes, but she wanted to say no. She’s a woman without much enthusiasm, I’d say.” It was a little hard to understand Barb, with her mouth full.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“You, on the other hand, are a person with lots of enthusiasm.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“Well, just look at yourself. Sweating like a dog and ready to go another couple of hours.”
“This is pure pleasure,” I said. “What could be more authentic to the Indian way of life t
han a handmade dugout canoe?”
She said, “If that’s not enthusiasm I don’t know what is.”
On the way home from school, Tuesday, Nicky wanted to know if he could help me with the boat. I suppose he figured the sooner the canoe was finished, the sooner I’d help him work on the bike again. I said okay, even though it was a project I’d definitely have preferred to do alone.
We walked over to Barb’s. As soon as we got there, I gave Nicky one of the chisels and a regular hammer. We chiseled at it until the trench was opened up pretty good. Nicky kept telling me we ought to be using the chain saw.
“Did you ever use a chain saw?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hear of an Indian using a chain saw?”
“Okay, okay.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s time to burn this trench.”
“Burn it?”
“That’s how it was always done by the Northern tribes. When you get it opened up like this, you can burn it. It makes the trench bigger, and it softens it up for easier chiseling.”
Nicky liked the sound of this step, I guess, because it seemed like it was going to be a lot less work. He went to the garage while I went to the basement. I figured he was going to gaze at his motorcycle for a while.
My plan was to line the trench of the log with shredded newspapers, to get the fire going, so I was searching through some stacks of newspaper in the corner, looking for the dry ones. Most of them were damp, so I must have been there ten or fifteen minutes before I had enough. That turned out to be a big mistake.
I was just starting back up the basement stairs, when, through the back door, I saw this enormous cloud of black smoke pouring up into the sky. I went into a sort of panic and ran out as fast as I could. The whole log was engulfed in blue and yellow flames; it was sending up the sort of black smoke you get from a fire in a refinery. Nicky was slapping at the fire with a throw rug.
I got another throw rug and the two of us slapped at it, but it was an incredible blaze; you couldn’t believe how hot it was. It was singeing some low-hanging leaves, and there were even some small flames on the tips of the evergreen shrubs.
There’s no way I’m a violent person, but about the time I first heard the siren of the fire engine, I took Nicky by his motorcycle jacket and made him tell me what happened. He said it was a little gasoline, some fuel oil, and a couple cans of charcoal starter; he’d gotten them all from the garage. He also said he was sorry, he was only trying to help.
The firemen showed up in this gigantic truck, and they hosed out the flaming log in no time. Now the log was soaking wet and had that stinking, charred smell you get when a wood fire is put out with water. The backyard looked like a swamp, and I felt like a jerk. I don’t know how many people were hanging around on the sidewalk and staring.
A fireman named Weatherwax, who acted like he was the honcho, started going through the house. He was carrying an ax. I kept telling him that there wasn’t any fire except the log, and I also told him in a polite way that he shouldn’t be going through the house. He kept asking me, “Who’s in charge here?”
I explained to Weatherwax about three times that Barb was our social worker. “We have permission to be here. You can call her and ask her.”
It didn’t cut any mustard. Weatherwax was the type who is all business, all hung up on his authority. He finally went into the backyard again and stared at the log, which wasn’t even smoldering. He demanded to know what was the meaning of this.
I told him I was using the log to make a dugout canoe.
“A what?”
“A dugout canoe,” I said.
“A what?” Then he said, “There will be a full report on this, boys.” Before he left, he told Nicky to get a haircut.
After they had gone, Nicky apologized approximately two dozen times. I finally told him to just shut up. I couldn’t stand any more apologies, and all the people staring at us were making me tense. I inspected the log real carefully, and to my relief there wasn’t much damage. It would take about two eons for it to dry out, but the wood itself wasn’t burned much at all. It could have been a lot worse.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As soon as Mrs. Grice found out about the log fiasco, we both went on pro again. Strict pro this time, with no privileges at all.
Barb had a talk with Mrs. Grice, but she couldn’t even get the probation shortened. In my opinion, she was just getting herself into no-man’s-land by thinking she could buck the system, or at least bend it her way.
It was the Thursday of the last week of school, just before Memorial Day weekend. Most people were taking final exams, but I was catching a break; I only had to take unit tests since I’d just been in school a couple of months.
Anyway, Mrs. Bluefish said I had to go see Mr. Saberhagen again. She didn’t give me any reason, she just said I was supposed to go to his office.
He put me in a chair at the front of his desk and said in his formal voice, “Floyd, something quite serious has come up, which we need to discuss.”
I told him I was listening. I was still wearing my moccasins, so I figured he was about to get on my case about that again.
Mr. Saberhagen seemed a little stressed; he was playing with the knot on his necktie and doing even more neck stretching than usual. Then he said, “Floyd, let me come right to the point. Mrs. Bluefish and I have both read the story you submitted for the young authors’ competition. We think it’s very disturbing. We don’t question your interest in writing, and we don’t doubt your talent, but it is our decision to withdraw this story from the competition.”
I was stunned. Was he talking about “Mask”?
Mr. Saberhagen continued, “A young man with your ability ought to be able to write a ripsnorting tale of adventure and excitement. But this story is very disturbing. It’s what I would call psychologically irregular.”
“Psychologically irregular?”
“Yes. It seems abnormal, to be blunt about it. Your mind seems to be moving in some very murky waters. Mrs. Bluefish tells me this is not the first time you have turned in this kind of work.”
“When I write stories, I like to use my imagination.”
“Imagination is fine, Floyd, but there is imagination, and then there is such a thing as preoccupation with unhealthy thoughts. Believe me, I get no pleasure in telling you this, but our decision to withdraw the story has to be final.”
I was still stunned. “What you’re saying is, I’m insane.”
Then he took off on this long speech about how nobody was saying I was exactly insane, and so on and so forth. I didn’t hear most of what he was saying because I was going into a very deep funk. I was plenty pissed, to tell the truth. All the time he was talking, I was staring at his paperweight, which was a glass sphere about the size of a baseball. It was one of those types that has a snowman in it, and if you turn it upside down it gets filled with snow-flakes. I felt like picking it up and throwing it through the wall behind him, which was all dark plate glass, with secretaries on the other side. I pictured the paperweight smashing all the glass to smithereens and these little fragments of broken glass whizzing around the room.
The problem is, you can get pissed about things that happen, but all it usually means is you end up bashing your head against the wall. Then you get in trouble, so you get even more pissed, which means it just goes on and on.
Saberhagen said, “Maybe you’d like to try and submit another story. Maybe you could come up with something a little more wholesome.”
“What, in two days?”
“I know it’s discouraging. And as I said, we don’t think you’re insane, but we do think it might be a good idea if you had a few talks with Mrs. Lacey.”
Mrs. Lacey is the agency psychologist. I didn’t really know her. I was tired of the whole conversation, anyway, and I just wanted to leave. I asked Saberhagen if that was all.
He said I could go. As I was leaving, he said he was sorry.
Not ha
lf as sorry as I was. I went home in a wholesale funk. As soon as I got to my room, Kinderhook started hanging around. He was talking about television, but I wasn’t listening.
I decided to go to the park, just to get away from everything and everybody. Kinderhook wanted to come along, but I said no. I slipped out through the fire escape. Of course being on pro, it was illegal for me to leave the house, but I didn’t give a shit.
I stayed in the park for over two hours. I wrote some things in my journal, mostly thoughts about making peace with life and living your own way. I gave some serious thought to taking off. I could pack my few important belongings and make my way to the appropriate reservation, where I could begin my real life as a Sioux. I would be in a different universe practically, a universe where my own ideals would fit in with the ideals of the group, and Mrs. Grice and Mr. Saberhagen and Mrs. Bluefish would have no authority over me.
By the time I got back to Gates House, everybody was about to sit down for dinner.
Afterward, it was my night for garbage detail. On my way back in from the Dumpster, I walked into the lounge where right away I saw Nicky and Slive, squared off. They were right in front of the TV. Nicky was saying to Slive, “You wanna fight somebody so bad, you try me out.”
“Are you crazy?” said Slive. “You just don’t want to keep your teeth, or what?”
Kinderhook was sitting on the couch, staring at them. I figured he was in the middle of it somehow with his pitiful TV hang-ups, but I knew sooner or later Nicky would get into it with Slive. He just had to.
I kept watching them while I put the garbage can back under the sink. Nicky took a swing at Slive but missed. Slive hit him in the mouth and knocked him down. Then he kicked him in the back.
I’m not sure what happened to me, but the next thing I knew, I was hitting Slive in the side of the head with my fist. I didn’t realize how hard I hit him; he fell over into the corner and knocked a planter down. Nicky was all over Slive in the corner, punching him in the head while he was down.
I ended up trying to pull Nicky off him. Mrs. Grice was suddenly in the room, yelling at the top of her lungs, and Marty was breaking up the fight.
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