Numbers

by David A. Poulsen

  October

  One

  I’d heard of the Holocaust before that Monday but it was just a word to me. I didn’t know what it meant, not really. To be honest, I didn’t know too many Jews. In fact, if you don’t count Seinfeld re-runs and a few other people on TV, then Julius Epstein, the kid who beat me at the regionals, was the only Jew I’d ever met. I guess growing up in a small town like Parkerville isn’t the best way to run into a lot of Jewish people. Or people of different colours and races generally. It wasn’t like when we’d go into the city. There we’d see what my dad called diversity. Not a lot of diversity in Parkerville. I’m not sure why that is.

  Like I said before, the unit wasn’t called the “Holocaust Unit.” That was our name for it. But not even right away. Most of the kids knew as much about the Holocaust as I did — not much. So that first day, it was like totally new information for a lot of us.

  The class started with Mr. R pointing stuff out on this wall map of Europe he had at the front. The map was faded and looked like it was at least as old as Parkerville Comprehensive. It had marks pretty well everywhere and scribbled notes in just about all the ocean parts. There wasn’t much blue on that map. Mr. R talked about how the borders of some of the countries weren’t the same then as they are now. To tell the truth, it wasn’t the most exciting few minutes. For a Mr. R class, it was getting awfully close to boring. But that didn’t last long.

  There was a quote in the top right hand corner of the blackboard in big block letters: “The Treaty of Versailles is a flagrant trampling of German rights and must be despised and resisted by every patriotic German.” — Adolf Hitler

  The quote hadn’t been there last class so I figured it must have something to do with what we’d be talking about today. All I knew about Hitler was that he was like the most horrible leader there had ever been. I wondered about having a quote on the board from this guy who was supposed to be so terrible, but I figured Mr. R would explain. I looked around the room. Everybody looked like they were thinking the same thing I was: So where is this going?

  Mr. R was always putting quotes on the board from people who were supposed to be totally disgusting, but sometimes what they said sort of made sense. And sometimes, he’d put quotes on the board from the people you thought were the good guys. Turns out they said some pretty creepy stuff. “It’s never a good idea to make assumptions based on what people say or think.” Mr. R said that a lot. I figured the quotes on the board were supposed to be examples of why you shouldn’t make assumptions. At least that’s what I thought. One of the things I liked about Mr. R was that he didn’t always explain everything completely — he liked for us to figure stuff out for ourselves.

  I’d guessed right. Mr. R left the map and walked over to where the quote was written on the board. He stood beside it looking at us.

  “Adolph Hitler … well, well, well. Mr. R must be losing it, right? He’s got a quote from history’s biggest monster on our chalkboard. What is going on?”

  I looked around the room again. Some of the kids were smiling. I was too. Because that is almost exactly what I’d been thinking.

  “Hitler, a monster? Maybe. But let’s look at what he is saying here.” And for the next few minutes Mr. R told us how the Treaty of Versailles — which was the peace treaty signed at the end of World War I — was unfair because it made Germany take the blame for the war and pay billions of dollars and have practically no army and lose a lot of its land and territories. You could see how the German people would be pissed off.

  That whole class was about the treaty. Mr. R had photos of the Hall of Mirrors in the palace where it was signed and it was pretty interesting, I have to admit. And there were other images too. Some showed what Europe looked like after the World War I, a lot of rubble and destroyed buildings, even some dead bodies — I wasn’t sure where he got those pictures, but they definitely got our attention.

  But then the class got even more excellent. Mr. R got T-Ho and Marcia Kiefer, who was this pretty big but really popular girl, up at the front of the class. That blew me away. T-Ho? Not exactly the guy you’d figure Mr. R would pick to be the star of some class activity. The weird part was that T-Ho seemed more or less okay with it.

  “Now, we’re going to have a class exercise, a game if you like,” Mr. R said. “I want all of you to pretend — remember I said pretend — that T-Ho (Mr. R was the only teacher who didn’t call T-Ho by his real first name, which was Travis, middle name Howard — that’s the T-Ho thing) and Marcia have had a terrible fight. Not a boyfriend-girlfriend type fight, just a huge and really ugly argument, and now they completely hate each other.”

  By then most of the class was laughing and Marcia’s face was the colour of a stop sign. T-Ho didn’t exactly look like he was having a great time, but he was definitely handling being up there in front of the class better than I thought he would. I mean, T-Ho’s whole life is about being cool — and having a look on his face that says adults are stupid and since school was invented by adults — it’s really stupid. But there he was at the front of Mr. R’s class — and not hating it.

  Mr. R held up his hands to get us to settle down. “Now the war between these two has been going on for a really long time and both of them have done some really nasty stuff to each other.”

  Then Mr. R got four other kids up at the front. One of them was Jordie Carlton, two were girls, and the other one was me. Mr. R lined the four of us up beside Marcia, which left T-Ho on the other side of the room, all by himself.

  “Because of the intervention of these four people, who are Marcia’s friends — in war they are called allies — T-Ho has lost his big battle with Marcia.”

  “Yeah, right,” T-Ho sort of snorted like he was saying yeah, that’s going to happen. Except he didn’t push it too far, maybe because Jordie was one of the allies.

  Mr. R walked over to the board. “What’s going to happen next is that Marcia and the allies are going to decide all the ways they will punish T-Ho for having this big, long fight with Marcia. And we’re going to write down all of these punishments in something we call ‘The Treaty of Her Guys.’”

  The four of us suggested stuff and Mr. R wrote our ideas on the board. We took away the Crap Wagon and made T-Ho give a couple of hundred dollars to Marcia, plus five bucks out of every nine dollars (an hour) he made pumping gas at the Jiffy Gas Mart on the highway for the next year. We decided he’d have to have one hand tied behind his back every day at school (that one was my suggestion). And the best one? Every time T-Ho saw Marcia in the hallway he’d have to say he was really sorry for all the pain he had caused her. Actually, I thought we did a pretty good job of coming up with stuff that was kind of like the things the Treaty of Versailles did to Germany. Mr. R must have thought so too because he was nodding and saying “good one” after most of our suggestions.

  By the end of the exercise, I think T-Ho was starting to forget it was supposed to be a game. But actually it was cool. Mr. R asked Marcia and the four of us to sit down and kept T-Ho up at the front of the room.

  “How do the rest of you feel about what has happened here?” Mr. R looked around the room. “Was it fair, for example, to take T-Ho’s car?”

  For a while, people tried to be funny. “If you really want to punish T-Ho, you should make him drive the Crap Wagon for the rest of his life.” That was Hennie. There was more stuff like that, and then a couple of guys made suggestions about what T-Ho could do for Marcia that made Marcia’s face get even redder. Mr. R didn’t put up with that. “Mr. Brunt and Mr. Bonham, you’ll wait in the hall until the class is over and then you will meet with me.”

  After they were gone, people got serious. “It wasn’t fair what the five of them got to do to T-Ho.” This came from a girl I didn’t know who sat near the back of the class. Turns out that was about how everybody felt. Even Marcia — the “enemy” — said, “I think it was wrong to take his car. It would make it way too hard for him to get to work and school.”

&
nbsp; Mr. Retzlaff nodded. “Good point, Marcia. Never take a man’s Crap Wagon.”

  That got a good laugh.

  “But here’s what’s most important.” Mr. R walked to the first row of desks. He looked at all of us and then back at T-Ho, who was still standing at the front of the class, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets.

  “T-Ho, how do you feel about what happened here today?”

  T-Ho didn’t even hesitate. “I’d be taking as much time as I needed to get even with every one of those bastards.”

  A few people laughed, but not many. Mr. R smiled. “While I would have preferred it if he’d stated it a little less colourfully, T-Ho has expressed exactly what I think each one of us would feel in that situation. And for that, ladies and gentlemen, I believe T-Ho deserves a round of applause.”

  All of us clapped like crazy and T-Ho even got a high-five from Jordie on his way back to his desk. Mr. R walked back up to the board and pointed to the Hitler quote. “Think about it, people.”

  And then the bell rang — almost as if Mr. R had been able to make it happen right at that second. It was the perfect ending to a very amazing class.

  Two

  I had to face reality — Diana McNair was out of my life. I tried calling her a couple of days after the dance. She didn’t hang up on me, but her voice told me that I was having about the same effect on her as, say, a bad smell.

  I was pretty upset … for about a week. My brother, Tim, came over for dinner one night and told me I’d get over it. He was home for a few days from university. He was staying at his girlfriend’s house so this was the first time I’d seen him. I don’t usually listen to him about women issues since he’s too old to have a clue how fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls think (he’s twenty-one), but this time he was right. Of course, he was just lucky, since he had no way of knowing about the beach volleyball game. Or Patti Bailer. That’s because they hadn’t happened yet.

  The thing is I’m decent at beach volleyball. It’s not like my best thing, but I can get through a game without embarrassing myself. Especially when the other players are The Six and their athletic abilities add up to a number that rhymes with schmeero.

  It was Jen’s idea. “It’s our last chance to catch some rays, drink a few beers, and have some fun.”

  She was right. It was like a seriously hot fall day and Dad let me have his car so we had that and the Crap Wagon. We swam in Scout Lake, which isn’t very big. My dad, who’s taken me fishing there for years, says that’s why the water is so warm. It’s an awesome looking place — the kind you see in those service station postcard pictures. The lake is surrounded by huge spruce and pine trees that must be a hundred years old.

  There’s tons of sand at one end of the lake and that’s where we set up for the afternoon — blankets, beer, chips, dip, a portable volleyball net that Hennie bought at a garage sale a couple of months earlier. One of the weird things about Hennie is that the guy goes to garage sales just about every Saturday, sometimes in Parkerville, sometimes in the city. And he buys all this stuff that I’m pretty sure he’ll never use. T-Ho gives him a hard time — calls Hennie a “garage sale Grandma” — but it doesn’t bother Hennie. He keeps going to sales and buying. And one of the things he bought was the volleyball net.

  It was excellent. We played two games and I was a stud in both. Even Rebel said “impressive” after I smashed one down Big Nose Kate’s throat. T-Ho and Rebel and the two girls were on one team. Hennie, Lou, and me — we were the other team. We killed them.

  We were in the middle of high-fiving and punching air and stuff after the second game when I saw this girl — one I’d never seen before. She was sitting up by the trees that bordered the beach. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been there. I guess with the game going on I didn’t see her at first. She was putting on sun block and pretty much ignoring us, which couldn’t have been easy since we were fairly loud.

  I couldn’t tell for sure if she was totally hot, since she was a ways away, but she definitely looked promising. I kicked the ball over to where she was sitting and then raced to get it before anybody else could.

  Smooth.

  It would have been smoother without all the stuff everybody was yelling, which pretty much ruined any chance I had of making the whole thing look accidental. It’s hard to be cool with a girl when lines like “Don’t tell her about your genital warts” and “Virginity is not the answer” are ringing through the trees. There was more, but you get the idea.

  I thought about grabbing the ball and going back to The Six without saying anything to her but I figured that would look even dumber. When I got closer, I could see I’d been right about the hot thing. But she didn’t look “duh” gorgeous, you know? Like those girls who spend a few hours every morning working on their faces and hair and haven’t ever read a book or had a thought that doesn’t start with “How do I look?” They always have that where am I and what day is this? expression on their faces.

  This girl seemed … I don’t know … together.

  “Hi,” I said. Amazing opening line.

  She looked up from putting lotion on her legs. “Hi.”

  I picked up the ball and stood there for a while trying to ignore all the stuff that was still coming from the beach. “Loser” seemed to be the current favourite.

  Which wasn’t helping my confidence. Plus I was wishing I’d spent more time deciding what I was going to wear that day. I had on this stupid T-shirt Uncle Herm had given me for my last birthday. It had “Beer — It’s What’s for Dinner” written across the front. Uncle Herm thought it was hilarious. Yeah, thanks, Unc … I’m pretty sure this shirt is totally impressing this girl. Right up there with the genital warts.

  “You … uh … go to Parkerville?”

  “I will be. I start next week.”

  “Oh.”

  The “loser” thing was a chant now and quite a bit louder. Sweet.

  “We just moved here,” she said.

  “Oh … uh … yeah, well, I’ll probably see you around school then.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m Andy Crockett. People call me Alamo.” I set the ball down and started to put my hand out but then I thought about how The Six would deal with that and changed my mind.

  “I’m Patti Bailer. People call me Patti.”

  At first I thought it was a put down, or that she was being sarcastic, but she was smiling, so maybe not.

  “Cool. Well, I’ll see you at school then.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I remembered I’d just said the same thing five seconds earlier.

  “Great.”

  “Great.”

  And it would have been great if I’d remembered to take the ball with me when I went back down to the beach.

  Shit.

  On the way back to town, T-Ho stopped the Crap Wagon right next to this field. I pulled up behind him, trying to figure out what was wrong. T-Ho’s car was actually running, so it didn’t seem like there was any reason to stop. The only things in the field were some round bales of hay left over from the summer. Nothing else.

  T-Ho and the others got out of his car and he motioned for Rebel and me to do the same. Major grumbling from The Six. Except for Rebel. To grumble you’d actually have to say something.

  “Dude, did you like bump your head?” Jen stared at T-Ho. Of course nobody got too smartassed with T-Ho. Except for Hennie.

  “Once a farm boy, always a farm boy, eh, brother? Just can’t get enough of the smell of cow shit,” Hennie gave a big sniff.

  “If you shut up you might learn something.” T-Ho looked at all of us but he didn’t seem mad. Actually, he had a little smile on his face, like he was in on something and we weren’t.

  So all of us followed him down into this ditch, up the other side, and through a barbed wire fence. Rebel was right behind T-Ho, looking sort of … interested, which wasn’t how Rebel normally looked. I stepped on the middle wire and held up the top one like I’d seen people do in movies. Je
n and Big Nose Kate got through without tearing any of their clothes and Big Nose Kate smiled at me. Then we all trooped along behind T-Ho out into the hay field for freaking ever.

  I like the smell of pastures and hay fields and I liked this one a lot. Sometimes it feels good to get away from the smells of a town, even a small town — gasoline, garbage, fast-food joints. There weren’t any of those smells here. Hennie jumped up on one of the round bales and took a couple of selfies up there. Lou pulled a stem of alfalfa out of the ground and stuck it in his mouth. It had dirt on it but Lou either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  There was a line of trees along one side of the field and the sun had dipped low enough in the sky that the light coming through those trees was making very cool geometric patterns on the ground all around us.

  We kept walking and I kicked through the stubble down to the dirt in one spot and reached down and grabbed a handful. It reminded me of the smell when my dad and I dig our potatoes out of the garden. I was wishing the highway noise was gone and I even wished The Six weren’t here. I’d have liked to hear silence in this place.

  “Shit.” Lou lifted a runner and examined the bottom of the shoe. So much for silence.

  “Cow shit, to be exact,” Jen laughed. “Who do you think you are … Alamo?”

  Yeah, hilarious, Jen.

  There weren’t cows in the field now, but apparently there had been. T-Ho didn’t pay any attention to the rest of us. He just kept walking like he was on some kind of mission. When he finally stopped, no one was sure why. There were chunks of cement foundation sticking out of the ground all over the place, like there’d been a building there once.

  Rebel, who is curious about exactly nothing, asked, “So, what was it?”

  “Bidwell Plant — gas or something. It blew up about sixty years ago. Some people died. Right here.”

  I looked at T-Ho but his face didn’t tell me much. Like, was this a joke or serious or what?

  “Did you know one of the people who died?” Hennie kicked at a chunk of cement and looked at T-Ho like, Dude, are you okay?