The Best Man

by Richard Peck

  That stopped Mr. Showalter cold. “Wait a min—”

  “He’s brought at least two knives to school,” Uncle Paul said, “one of them bigger than he is. And today he pulled a knife on my nephew.”

  “That’s a big lie,” Jackson hollered from the stairs. “Didn’t happen.”

  “Jackson, go back upstairs and get your mother. I want to know if she’s been hearing from school about you,” Mr. Showalter said. But Jackson just stood there. “I’m counting to three,” Mr. Showalter said.

  Uncle Paul walked over to the stairs. He held up the Cubs jersey.

  “Come on down and get your shirt, Jackson,” Uncle Paul said, and waited. Jackson wanted it and didn’t want it. He hung there in space. Then he started down the stairs. The chandelier glared on his skinned head.

  It was real quiet. Jackson reached for the shirt. Uncle Paul handed it over. “What do you say?”

  “I say that kid was the one who pulled a knife on me,” Jackson said in a high, squeaky voice, not looking down at me.

  “Try again,” Uncle Paul said.

  Finally Jackson mumbled, “Thanks.”

  It was time to go. Uncle Paul said to Mr. Showalter, “It wasn’t the shirt he wanted, Bob. Try to figure out what he does want.”

  We were in the car and halfway home when I said, “Were you and Mr. Showalter friends in high school? Like best buds?”

  “Not especially,” Uncle Paul said. “He was an all-around jock. He played first base and outfield and pitched eight one-hitters in his senior year. He could have gone pro, but he blew out both his knees.

  “Everybody had a crush on Bob Showalter,” Uncle Paul said, turning into our drive. “I think I had a crush on him.”

  A what? “You mean, like a bromance?” Which was really a fifth-grade word. I must have got it off TV. Dad and I watched a lot of TV down in the garage.

  “Not even,” Uncle Paul said, and killed the engine.

  “What’s Jackson really want?” I asked.

  “For starters, a full-time dad,” Uncle Paul said.

  “I’ve got a full-time dad,” I said.

  “Yes, you’ve got a good dad.”

  “Remember the LEGO Ferris wheel?” I asked.

  It was supposed to be a scale model of the first Ferris wheel ever, from the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. It took over half of the garage, Dad’s office part. He built it through a winter when I was in preschool. Uncle Paul helped. Grandpa Magill supervised the job. They sort of forgot I was there, but it was awesome. All kinds of stuff happened in the garage.

  “You’ve got a great dad,” Uncle Paul said. “You just better hope he never grows up.”

  “You think you’ll be a dad someday?”

  “I don’t know,” Uncle Paul said. “First things first. But yes, I’d like to be a dad.”

  “And another thing.”

  Uncle Paul waited.

  “If what Jackson wanted was a dad, how come you gave him the shirt?”

  “Because now that you’ve been in his house, he’ll leave you alone.”

  Then we got out of the car into the long-shadowy evening just as Dad came out of the garage with Grandpa behind him:

  Dad

  Uncle Paul

  Grandpa Magill

  These were the three I wanted to be.

  6

  By the way, Uncle Paul was right. Jackson Showalter kept off my case after that. He was still trouble. He gave Mrs. Bird a hard time. Once he told her where she could put Flat Stanley. But he left town that summer with his mom, and some other school got him. We haven’t heard the last of him, but the good thing was he was gone.

  Then came second grade, and we could all tie our shoes except for a couple of stragglers. Mrs. Canova was the teacher, and she read a bunch of picture books to us. She read And Tango Makes Three, which is how we found out about chinstrap penguins. And Daddy’s Roommate.

  In all the summer days between the grades Dad and I tooled around town in one vintage car after another. Once a Hudson Hornet, and usually a convertible. Grandpa rode in the back with a bottle of Gatorade. We were always paint all over from restoring another car.

  Or as Holly put it, “Why can’t we have regular cars like normal people? Why can’t we have a Lexus like Janie Clarkson’s father? A car that’s just one color all over. Why doesn’t Dad have a real job? Janie Clarkson’s father is the CEO of something.”

  Holly went to driver’s ed the summer she was sixteen and practiced on Grandma Magill’s ’92 Lincoln, which cornered like a landing craft and got eleven miles to the gallon.

  • • •

  In Mrs. Wainwright’s third grade the standardized tests kicked in. You had to fill in all the ovals up to the edges with a special pencil.

  We were taking a test one time when a cell phone rang.

  Cell phones? We were third graders, and it was a no-phone school. It was Natalie Schuster’s phone.

  The special pencils rolled out of our hands. Anything to break up the day. Mrs. Wainwright pounded down an aisle.

  By now, Natalie was taking the call. Mrs. Wainwright’s face went a funny color. She put out her hand for the phone. Natalie shook her head. “It’s my mother,” she said. “Besides, I’m done with the test. There was nothing to it.”

  I forget how this scene ended, except Natalie kept her phone. As she said, her mother needed to know everything going on at school in real time.

  • • •

  Then it’s fourth grade, with Ms. Penfield. A lot of it went over my head, including an Introduction to Fractions. Though we really got into fractions the next year.

  Ms. Penfield resigned that June, but not because of us. She said standardized testing kept us from learning anything to be tested on. Her blood pressure was going through the ceiling, she said. We looked at the ceiling, and when we looked back, it seemed like she was gone.

  In fourth you could walk yourself to school, so that was good and grown-up. I remembered the olden times, holding Grandpa Magill’s hand all the way to school, and picking up litter.

  • • •

  Then we had a bad night just before the start of fifth grade, a hot summer night. Some sound crept into my sleeping head, a scratching.

  Now I was awake. The shadows of the backyard trees moved on the ceiling. Then that rasping sound again, on screen wire. No air-conditioning up here.

  I didn’t want to look. When I looked, a face in the window was looking back. Boy, that’ll wake you up. Burning eyes. It was Cleo, Grandpa’s cat.

  But how? What combination of tree limbs and drain pipe and kitchen roof got her all the way up here? She’d never been up here, and she was no friend of mine. She didn’t like kids. She didn’t like anybody but Grandpa.

  A claw came up again to scrape the screen. When I sat up, she knew. Still, she stayed hunkered on the windowsill, flat against the screen. Her ears pointed at the night. I switched on my lamp, and her eyes flashed yellow, and then she was gone. Like a flying squirrel, into the dark.

  I sat there, groggy, not wearing much, until I realized Cleo must have come about Grandpa. That had to be it.

  I threw on some clothes and detoured around Mom and Dad’s room. They’d tell me I’d had a dream.

  When I started down the stairs, someone was coming up, not making a sound. Ghostly. Ghastly. Holly.

  We were a step apart before she saw me. She wanted to scream, but whispered instead. “You don’t see me.”

  “I sort of do,” I said. We were this close to each other. Her hair smelled funny, like autumn leaves. Some dampness was coming off her like she and Janie Clarkson had snuck into the swim club pool again because one of the lifeguards—

  “Why are you even awake?” she whispered. “You’re never awake.”

  “I think something’s wrong with Grandpa. I’m going over t
here. Tell Mom and Dad.”

  Holly was wearing cutoffs and a soggy tank top. “I’ll have to put on my pajamas first. I haven’t been out. I’ve been upstairs asleep for hours.”

  Then I was gone.

  I could have circled around the block on the sidewalk, but I knew the back way by heart.

  Grandpa was by the swing where Dad could watch him all day from the garage. He’d fallen on the ground, in his seersucker suit and shirt and tie. His straw hat had rolled away. He’d been waiting for the day to get going, to walk me to school. Except it was still summer, and I’d been walking myself to school for a year.

  I thought he was dead. It was too dark to see breathing, so I lunged at him to drag him back. I needed him back. I wasn’t done with him.

  He used to let me sit on his lap behind the wheel of the Lincoln. He let me think I was steering and grown-up and driving. He kept one hand on the wheel down low, and we’d go all over town. We ran a light once, so that was the end of that.

  But I didn’t want him to go. He and Grandma Magill were all the grandparents I had. I could barely remember my Archer ones.

  He opened an eye and looked past me up to the swing. He wanted to be up there. He sighed. Then I was yelling and yelling, till the lights came on in bedroom windows all around us. Boy, did I yell.

  And somewhere Cleo was watching with her paw drawn up, then turning away.

  An EMS van lumbered up the alley, flashing red and blue lights. They connected Grandpa to things and took him away on a stretcher with wheels. Grandma Magill rode in the van with him, in the track suit she slept in. Dad followed in the Lincoln.

  I wanted to go too, but Mom said no. She stood in the yard, holding her bathrobe around her. “I need you here,” she said. “She has her son. I need mine.”

  I hadn’t been needed before. It made me taller. So did the shadows.

  “How did you know?” Mom asked.

  “Cleo,” I said, and Mom just nodded.

  “Is Grandpa going to die?”

  “Not if your grandma Magill has anything to say about it. I think he’s had a stroke, so we won’t know for a while.”

  I went closer, and we put our arms around each other. Then Holly was with us, in her pajamas, smelling of the chlorine from the pool. We held on to one another, trying to hold on to Grandpa. I remembered how he took Dad to the first game the Cubs played under lights, as morning crept in and fell across the empty swing.

  • • •

  They kept Grandpa in the hospital till after school started. Cleo wasn’t around either. Grandma Magill, who hated all cats, put fresh food in Cleo’s bowl on their back porch every day. Squirrels ate it, and a one-eyed cat named Sigmund Freud who lived in the corner house. Chipmunks ate it. Everybody ate Cleo’s food but Cleo.

  Then on the day Grandpa came home, Cleo was back in the swing, curled up asleep in a sunny patch.

  So everybody was home, but Grandpa had to learn to talk again. Dad printed out a big card with the alphabet on it. Grandpa could point to letters with his good hand. That kept the conversation going until Grandpa was talking again. He never could walk, though. Dad got him up and dressed every morning, and put him to bed at night. Dad was there.

  • • •

  So then it was fifth grade with all the same crowd plus a new kid. Our big teeth were in, and our faces were catching up. Now I was fourth tallest behind two of the Joshes and the new kid, Raymond Petrovich, who was Gifted. Except for a girl named Esther Wilhelm, who was taller than everybody and never said anything.

  Fifth grade was the year we had three different teachers and a lockdown with cops. A really good year once it got going.

  We started in September with Mrs. Forsyth, who was nice and quit at Christmas to have a baby. She turned expecting a baby into a lesson plan. We did a PowerPoint on her sonograms. She taught us fractions with her trimesters. It was all about babies until Christmas.

  Then, though I didn’t see this coming, Lynette Stanley and Natalie Schuster became almost friendly. They never went to each other’s house. Nobody ever went to Natalie’s house. You could picture it, but didn’t go there. Still, Lynette and Natalie sat in the swings at noon, eating their sandwiches, throwing big words at each other.

  “What’s that about?” I asked Lynette. “You and Natalie?”

  “I don’t want her for an enemy,” Lynette said. “Anyway, do you want to have lunch with me?”

  “Not really,” I said. It would have been okay except for people making comments.

  I ate lunch up in the bleachers of the all-purpose room with two Joshes and Raymond Petrovich. Nobody bought the school lunch. Nobody. You brought a sandwich from home. My dad made mine.

  It could be anything: leftover poached salmon on weird, foreign-tasting bread. Chutney and pepper jelly, oozing out of the bread. Sometimes a side salad in a Tupperware container with lettuce in mud colors and his own homemade croutons.

  I was the only kid in school with croutons. Nobody wanted to swap lunches with me. Nobody.

  One noon a few of us were having lunch when a kid ran in from outside and up the bleachers to me. He may have been a third grader.

  “Hey, Archer,” he yelled, “your girlfriend’s beating up Natalie Schuster.”

  Everybody swarmed down the bleachers and out the door. Natalie and Lynette were in the dirt by the swings.

  This was the first girl fight of the year. And Lynette outweighed Natalie. Lynette outweighed me. Natalie was flat on her back. Lynette straddled her. There was major hair-pulling and screaming from both of them.

  As a crowd formed, the screaming let up. Lynette had Natalie pinned and spoke in a low and dangerous voice. “Take back what you said. Retract it.”

  “I’m taking nothing back.” Natalie squirmed. “It’s all true. I got it straight from the adults, and get off me, you big cow. This skirt’s from Nordstrom. Where’s my phone? I’m taking a selfie for evidence when my mother sues the school for having you in it, you big, fat, bovine—”

  Whoa. Natalie shouldn’t have used the fat word. Besides, Lynette was mostly muscle, as Natalie was finding out.

  While the schoolyard held its breath, Lynette climbed off Natalie and brushed herself down. Little Josh Hunnicutt was standing right there, and his eyes were the biggest thing about him. He was still the smallest kid in our grade.

  No teacher came running. Mrs. Forsyth couldn’t come running. She was in her third trimester.

  Natalie was sprawled out and scared to budge till Lynette moved away. I got this idea she was going to stomp on Natalie. Crazy idea, but Lynette was having it too.

  Her legs shook. She was itching to jump on Natalie with both sneakers and pound her into the playground.

  I came up behind her. “Better let it go, Lynette.”

  She whipped around, hauling off to swing. But she saw me, and her arms kind of hung down. Tears were coming, which you don’t see on Lynette.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I’ve got a plan.”

  I didn’t, but I took her by the hand to walk her out of this. Let people make comments if it made them feel better. By fifth grade can’t you have the friends you want?

  We’d nearly made our big exit when behind us Natalie howled out, “Lynette Stanley!” Lynette spun around, and so did I because I wouldn’t let go of her hand.

  Instead of a backpack, Natalie carried her stuff around in a lady’s leather handbag with a Gucci bar on it and a scarf tied to the handle. She’d dumped everything out on the ground. Even her eyeliner, which she put on after she got to school. Most mornings she looked like a startled raccoon. Eyeliner in fifth grade? Yes, if you’re Natalie. She’d worn it in fourth.

  “Where’s my phone, Lynette? Did you steal it?” She was a little braver with some daylight between them, and freaking about her phone.

  “Why would I steal your phone or anything y
ou’ve got?” replied Lynette in her dangerous voice. “If you can’t keep track of your phone, maybe you’re not mature enough to have it. Maybe your mother should cancel your contract.”

  Natalie seethed.

  “But you can search me,” Lynette said. “Though it’s only fair to warn you, if you lay one finger on me, I’ll break both your arms.”

  I dragged her away. The first bell was about to ring. “Thanks,” Lynette mumbled. “You don’t have a plan. When did you ever have a plan? But thanks. I didn’t leave any marks on her. I know better. But I wanted to stomp her.”

  “Oh, well,” I said. “Who doesn’t?”

  Back there behind us, Natalie screamed, “And I still hate your hair!”

  She’d pulled some of it out. The rest stood up like a big orange dandelion around Lynette’s head.

  “Retract?” I said to her.

  “She knows the word. I suppose you want to know what the fight was about.”

  I was interested.

  “What I tried to make her take back was true.” Lynette swiped one of her eyes. “I’ll put it in a note. You can read it. Can I borrow your comb?”

  “You kidding me?” I said. “I don’t own one.” Then the first bell rang.

  We had five minutes before the next bell when we were supposed to be in our seats. I hit the boys’ restroom. It wasn’t a problem after Jackson Showalter left except for sixth graders. When they were in there, you didn’t go. You held it. But when the coast was clear, I’d drop by the restroom just to wash my hands or move my hair around a little.

  It was empty except for Josh Hunnicutt, who had to stand on tiptoes at the urinal. We were both at the sinks.

  He gave me a nod. Then he reached in his jeans pocket and pulled out Natalie’s phone to show me.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Listen, Josh, that’s stealing.” But I was grinning.

  “Not if I don’t take it home,” he said.

  The one place Natalie had no hope of finding her phone was in the boys’ restroom, right? We decided to put it up on the top of the wall of a toilet stall. Those walls don’t go to the ceiling.

  Josh climbed on a toilet. “Beam me up,” he said, and I swung him onto my shoulders. He weighed practically nothing.