by David Lubar
FORTY
I wake and eat and walk and board the bus and ride and disembark and start my day at school. In English, we might read or write or debate or listen. On this day we were introduced to polysyndenton. It struck me as a dangerously wordy technique, and one best used sparingly.
Zenger Zinger for April 28
Last week’s answer: “My ballpoint pen melted and drooped into a semicircle,” John Peter said ubiquitously.
This week’s puzzle: “I’m against plays where the performers have to scale the walls,” John Peter said _________.
“It would be great to put out a color edition once in a while,” Sarah said when we were wrapping up the meeting.
“We’re lucky we can put out any edition,” I said. “Maybe there’s another club we can resurrect. We could do a joint newsletter.”
“Good idea.” Jeremy went over to the laptop connected to the SMART Board and logged into his student account. Then he used the browser to pull up the budget from the district’s web site.
“Well, this is fascinating,” Richard said, “but numbers make my head hurt. I’ll leave you math types to it.” He got up and walked out.
There were a couple more scattered “me, too”s, which triggered a mass exodus.
“Looks like it’s me and you,” I said.
“That’s all it will take,” Jeremy said. “Hey, here’s one.” He pointed to a line on the display. “Future Farmers Club. I’ve never heard of that.”
“Me neither.”
We found eleven other clubs that didn’t seem to exist anymore.
“Wow,” I said. “All that money could have been used for things the school needs. What a waste.”
“Hang on.” Jeremy scrolled to a different section of the budget.
“Look at this,” he said. He tapped a section labeled “prior-year surplus.” “That’s any unspent funds. See here? The Pep Club didn’t use all their money last year. So it showed up as a surplus this year. Everything has to add up. For every dollar allocated, there has to be a dollar spent. That’s how budgets work. But there’s no surplus listed for the phantom clubs.”
“So the money for the Latin Club—for all these clubs—was spent?” I asked. My scalp tingled as my brain caught up with what Jeremy was implying.
“Somebody spent it,” he said.
I heard the janitor rolling his mop and bucket down the hall. They’d be kicking us out soon. “Let’s finish this at my place,” I said.
“Do you have good Internet access?” he asked.
“Not really. It’s okay.”
“We’ll go to my place.” He pulled out his phone and called home for a ride.
I was enough of a reporter to know we were on to something big. There was a small chance we could find an honest explanation for the missing money. But there was a lot larger chance that someone had been stealing the money that was allocated for all the clubs that no longer existed.
As we rode in the backseat of Jeremy’s mom’s car, I remembered what had happened when I’d been called to the principal’s office. Mr. Sherman had not looked at all happy about having me revive the Latin Club. But he also looked like he didn’t want to protest too loudly. I guessed, if he was involved with all of this, he didn’t want to risk me finding out exactly what Jeremy and I had just found out. He knew that if I got the funds, I’d go away happy, and never give it another thought.
“This could be a real scandal,” I said.
“Definitely,” Jeremy said. “I feel like Woodward and Bernstein.”
“Both of them?” I asked. Those were the reporters who had discovered the Watergate scandal back in the 1970s that brought down President Nixon.
“No. You can be one.”
“How about Hudson and Danger?” I asked.
“That sounds even cooler.”
When we reached his house, Jeremy set up two laptops, then downloaded the school budgets for the past fifteen years to one of them.
“That seems like a lot,” I said.
“We need to find out when the embezzlement started,” he said. “And we need to see when the inactive clubs were eliminated.”
“We could check yearbooks,” I said.
“That might be tough,” Jeremy said. “I’m not sure they’re searchable.”
“What about the local paper?” I said. “Most clubs get mentioned once in a while. I can search by year, to see when each club stopped being active?”
“Great idea.”
We got to work. Jeremy pulled a list of all clubs from the budget and printed it out for me. I searched the newspaper, crossed off the clubs that were still active, and noted the years the other clubs had stopped meeting.
“The oldest budget I grabbed is legitimate,” Jeremy said. “The clubs are all real. And the money left over by three of them was accounted for in the budget for the next year.”
“So, no crimes happened that year.”
“Right. Let’s move on.”
The next several budgets were fine, too. Then, midway through the batch, Jeremy said, “Found one! Eight years ago, there was no active Latin Club. But there was a budget for it.”
“How could that happen?” I asked.
“People are lazy,” he said. “They try to do as little work as possible. Maybe nobody on the board even knew the club was gone. Either way, at the end of the year, someone should have noticed that none of the money allocated for the Latin Club was ever spent.”
“I think somebody did notice,” I said. “And they decided to take advantage of it.”
“For sure.” Jeremy pointed to the list. “Look at this. One club wasn’t enough. Somebody got greedy. Three clubs were eliminated the next year. But they weren’t removed from the budget.”
He checked through the rest of the budgets. All together, the misused money rose close to six figures.
Terror and excitement can feel pretty similar. I think they were wrestling in my stomach for control. “This really is huge,” I said.
“Enormous.”
“Who do we tell?” I asked. “The police?”
“They won’t listen to us,” Jeremy said. “We’re just kids.”
“Lee’s dad is a lawyer,” I said. “We could give all of this to him.” I looked at my watch. “He won’t be home yet. He works late a lot.”
“Stay for dinner,” Jeremy said. “My folks will drive us over after that.”
I called my parents to let them know I was under the supervision of responsible adults. After dinner, Jeremy’s dad drove us across town to Lee’s house.
When we got there, he pulled to the curb and turned on the ball game on the radio. “Take your time.”
Lee’s mom answered the door.
“Hi, Scott. Lee’s up in her room,” she said.
“Actually, we came to see Mr. Fowler.”
She hid her surprise well, and led us into the living room.
“I think we uncovered a major crime,” I said.
He hid his surprise well, too. After Jeremy had gone over the evidence, Mr. Fowler said, “This is serious. And you were smart to bring it to me. With local issues, there’s no way to know who might be involved. I’ll take it to the state district attorney. He has forensic accountants who can analyze all of this.”
Jeremy turned to leave.
“I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” I said.
After he headed out, I checked to make sure Lee hadn’t come out of her room. The thump of music pulsing through her closed door removed any fear my words would be overheard.
“I need advice,” I told Mr. Fowler.
“Shoot,” he said.
“Actually, before I started, I was going to make you promise not to shoot,” I said.
“Are we specifically talking about firearms, or are you including archery and slingshot
s?” he asked.
“All of those. And trebuchets,” I said, naming my favorite type of catapult.
“You actually know what those are?” he asked.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Sadly, no. Although, were one of those involved, I’d be more likely to shoot you from it than with it. That would greatly increase the chance of satisfying results. What’s your question?”
“I like Lee.” I paused to let that sink in.
“I was not unaware of that,” he said.
“Litotes,” I said.
“What?”
“Litotes. A figure of speech where an opposite is negated. Not unaware. Saying more by saying less. Sorry. Bad habit. I’ve been force-fed a lot of this. A little learning. Dangerous thing. But, yes, I’m not surprised that you are not unaware. Parents tend to know more than kids realize. Very observant of you.”
“You’re babbling,” Mr. Fowler said. “And I know the definition of litotes. I was just surprised to have a rhetorical term pop up in the middle of what started out as a serious discussion of adolescent angst and indecision.”
Good grief. He was right. I was turning into Mouth, right before my own ears. And I was sweating. And feeling cold. And dizzy. And hot. And shivery.
“Say it,” Mr. Fowler said.
“I want to ask her out,” I said. “But I have no idea how she’ll react to anything.”
“That sounds about right,” he said. He seemed to be enjoying my discomfort.
“Look, can you give me any advice?”
“You’re seeking advice on asking Lee out from the one person on the planet who doesn’t want her to date?” he asked.
“It seemed like a good idea.” I tried to remember how to breathe. He was playing me like I was a half-pound sunfish on a ten-pound line. He could keep letting me run and reeling me in all day. Or like a heavyweight boxer going ten rounds against a toddler. Or like—oh, hell. Now my brain was babbling thoughts worse than my mouth had babbled words.
From the side, Mrs. Fowler spoke. “Lawrence, the quality of mercy . . . ,” she said. “Help the kid out.”
“Okay,” he said to her.
If I’d known quoting Shakespeare would do the trick, I’d have already been back in Jeremy’s car. I gave Mr. Fowler my full attention.
“Be honest,” he said.
I waited. He didn’t expand on his statement. I was reminded of a crucial moment in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when the computer spits out a long-awaited answer.
“That’s it? ‘Be honest?’”
“That’s it. Whatever else is perplexing or unpredictable about Lee, however cryptic she might be when the stakes are low, she values honesty. I’d like to think that, perhaps, this is something she learned from her parents. Maybe so. Maybe not. Either way, that’s really all I can tell you. Other than a gentle reminder not to hurt her. But we’ve already covered that.”
“Yes, we have. Uh, thanks for the advice.”
“Are you planning to follow it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that was an honest answer. Good start.”
FORTY-ONE
I heard you stopped by the house last night,” Lee said when I got to geometry. “You could have said hi.”
“There were parents waiting in the car,” I said. I explained what Jeremy and I had discovered. “Your father seemed like the best person to give it to.”
“He was,” Lee said. “He might help people turn rivers into sewers, but he’s honest.”
“Honesty is a good quality in a river sewer man.” I pictured Lee’s dad with a Mark Twain kind of mustache in a Mark Twain kind of scene with white coats, riverboats, rafts, and very muddy water filled with small brown bobbing objects. “It would be a good quality in a school board member, too.”
“It will be interesting to watch this evolve,” Lee said.
“Paronomasia intended?” I asked.
“Intended and savored,” Lee said.
• • •
My success with the catachresis paragraph, and a consequent easing of hostilities between Mrs. Gilroy and me, had given me the courage to ask her something that had been on my mind ever since curiosity and ambition had driven me to look up a ton of rhetorical terms, well beyond the forty-seven figures of speech she’d listed on the board.
“Wish me luck,” I whispered to Lee.
“Good luck.”
“If I die, you can have my slot cars.”
“Yippee.”
“Here goes . . . ,”
I raised my hand, interrupting our discussion of ellipsis. When Mrs. Gilroy called on me, I pointed at the terms on the board and said, “It’s a mess.”
“Can you elaborate on that, Mr. Hudson?” she asked. “A pronoun in an isolated sentence is generally not very informative. What is a mess?”
“The figures of speech are a mess. There are terms all over the place with overlapping meanings,” I said. “And some terms have different definitions, depending on where you look. I picked up a book at the used bookstore. Some of the definitions are totally different from the ones I’ve seen elsewhere.”
To my surprise, she nodded in agreement. “All of this is true. The Romans adapted from the Greeks. The medieval scholars took their turn, followed by centuries of university professors. Even people who tried to reclassify everything couldn’t resist leaving the old terms in place. On top of that, in part with thanks to our friends the ancient Greeks, the same terms appear with different meanings in other fields. In philosophy, a tautology is a statement that is self-evidently true. Hypothera is a rhetorical term, and also an obsolete word for part of an insect wing. Meiosis is understated irony, and a type of cell division. Rhetoric is a mess, a stew, a hodgepodge,” she said. She wrote that sentence on the board:
Rhetoric is a mess, a stew, a hodgepodge.
“Class, what do we have here?”
“Tautology, maybe?” I said. That was easy. She’d tagged it with three similar terms.
Mrs. Gilroy wrote that word on the board, including my question mark. “Yes. What else?”
“Stew is used as a metaphor,” Julia said.
Mrs. Gilroy added that to the list. “What else?”
“Hodgepodge has assonance and consonance,” Lee said. “And it rhymes.”
“I wonder whether there’s a term for internal rhyme,” I said.
“Don’t just wonder and wait for an answer,” Mrs. Gilroy said. “Research and investigate.” She tapped the words on the board. “All of your answers are correct. There’s also a literary allusion. My phrase owes a debt to the marvelous and well-known opening of a work you probably haven’t read yet: Cannery Row. Mr. Hudson is correct when he points out that the study of figurative language is a mess. Every one of you has now looked at this simple sentence as carefully as a surgeon studies a heart he is repairing. You haven’t just read it or heard it; you’ve grasped it. Rhetoric is a mess, but it is our mess.”
May 5
Sean, I just wrote “nice benefit” in an essay. But I’ve been more aware of Latin ever since we formed the club. And benefit has bene as a root. I’m pretty sure bene means good. So I suspect nice benefit might be redundant. The problem is, I often want to add words that way when I’m writing. To my ear, benefit by itself feels undressed. I wonder whether that means my ear needs more tuning. On the other hand, you could use nice benefit for irony if you got something you didn’t want. Like, “Gee, Mr. Cravutto, rope burns are a nice benefit of playing tug-of-war.” I always thought irony meant when something happens that smacks you in the face or goes completely opposite from the way you’d planned. Like pretty much everything I did freshman year. And it does mean that. But it also means sarcastically saying the opposite of what you mean.
That’s enough for now, you charming and eloquent little bun
dle of bowel and bladder control.
Zenger Zinger for May 5
Last week’s answer: “I’m against plays where the performers have to scale the walls,” John Peter said anticlimactically.
This week’s puzzle: “Well-mannered men love wordplay,” John Peter said _________.
Wednesday at the newspaper meeting, Jeremy and I strutted out our discovery.
“That’s big,” Sarah said.
“If it’s true,” Mr. Franka said.
“Do you think it isn’t?” I asked.
“I think it is probably true. Maybe even very likely. We won’t know until after the experts investigate the flow of the funds, and the legal system makes a judgment. We can never act before the fact.” He paused and frowned, as if he’d noticed the unintended rhyme. “If we call suspects criminals before they’re convicted, we’ve committed a crime ourselves. What’s our best friend when discussing crime?”
We all shouted the answer to that question. “‘Alleged’!”
• • •
“Scott Hudson, please report to the office.”
Now what? It was the middle of second period on Thursday, and I had no idea why I’d been called down. Dad was waiting there for me. Before I could even speculate about some disaster, he said, “Your mom forgot to tell you she made a doctor’s appointment for you.” He shot me a wink with the eye that wasn’t facing the school secretary.
I followed him out. “There’s no appointment, is there?’”
“No. But we’re giving Bobby a bachelor party, and we didn’t want you to miss out.”
Now I was really puzzled. Dad led me around the corner, out of sight of the school office windows, to a van from a local roofing contractor. Wesley was at the wheel.
“New job?” I asked.
“No. We just needed room for all the passengers. I borrowed this from a friend.”
I looked inside. Bobby was there, along with his bandmates, Wayne and Charlie. I gave him a quizzical look. He responded, “No clue.”
I got in, and Wesley took off. Wherever we were going, I was pretty sure it didn’t involve kegs of beer, cigars, or adult entertainment.
