Gold Dust

by Chris Lynch

  “Um-hmm,” I said. “Too bad he had to die. And that he was a half-wit.”

  “Yes. And there was one thing, one big thing, that I think they got quite wrong. When that catcher asks if everyone has begun being kind to him simply because they know he is dying.”

  “Right,” I said, taking a wild swing. “Like it would really matter.”

  “No,” Napoleon answered. “I believe it matters very much. But I don’t think the pitcher’s answer was an honest one. He said, ‘Everybody knows everybody’s dying, and that’s why people are as good as they are.’”

  I dropped my spoon into my empty bowl. “Ya, I remember that now. I thought that was really great. I loved that part. What was wrong with that?”

  Sometimes, I could get the quick shock of a feeling that what I said could make Napoleon Charlie Ellis very sad and disappointed, and I did not know why or how to stop doing it. This was one of those times.

  “I have moved three times in my life already, Richard Riley Moncreif, and the more new people I meet the less anyone seems to know about anyone else. And when you meet someone who is different, den dat is a remarkable ting.”

  It was the first time. The first time I had heard it all peeled away, and heard Napoleon sound anything like his father. And he was breathing heavily, directly into my ear, as if this was an effort for him, and at the same time some kind of challenge, a dare, to me.

  One that I did not understand.

  “I’m sorry. That you had to move so much,” I said. “Maybe if you stayed in the same place you’d get to know people better. And they would be better. Maybe this is your stop. Maybe it’ll happen here.”

  “Boston?” he said, raising one eyebrow high. “That’s not what the papers say.”

  “Well, first thing is, stop looking at the papers.”

  “All right. So when are we getting together then, you and I and our fathers?”

  Sigh. I was so pleased to see Napoleon sort of warming up. But at the same time...

  It wouldn’t do either of us any good to be pretending.

  “Okay, second thing is, maybe you should stop asking for that. It wouldn’t... be a good mix.”

  He nodded, like he had an equation just now worked out. Only he didn’t look satisfied or relieved, like a regular guy would.

  “Richard, are you saying that reading about Boston or meeting your people won’t be helpful in straightening me out? Is that what you’re saying?”

  I was approaching overload. No, Napoleon, just cut it out... all the time with this stuff. Always, always, he had to make it harder when it didn’t have to be.

  I started humming. To the movie tune. So bang the drum slowly... and play the fife lowly...

  “Richard?”

  “No. What I’m saying is, can’t you just know a guy for the guy, and not think about where he comes from or who he lives with or whatever?”

  He let the words float in the air. So we could both hear them. I think we both did.

  “Good question,” he said.

  He may have been waiting for me to give the answer. If I knew what it was I would have given it. But he wasn’t solving it either, so I was more than ready to move on to questions we could deal with.

  “You gonna finish that?” I asked, pointing to his melting strawberry with puddled strawberry sauce.

  He slid me the plate, shaking his head.

  GONE BANANAS

  “SO WHERE’S YOUR SISTER?” Butchie wanted to know.

  I looked at Beverly, and she looked at me. We were sitting side by side in gray metal folding chairs in the school’s ancient auditorium, St. Gerald’s Hall. We were supposed to be listening to instructions on how we were going to wow the locals as a school-sized choir this upcoming Palm Sunday. Beverly and I were in the mime section of the choir. We didn’t need to listen all that closely. Butchie was the one member of the class so incredibly unaware of being unmusical he was asked not to sing, so he too had time on his hands.

  “Who are you asking?” I asked.

  “Both of you.”

  “What sister would that be, Butch?” Beverly said wearily.

  “Sister Mowgli,” he laughed.

  “Would you just cut that stuff out, Butch?” she snapped. “Don’t be a goon all the time.”

  “Ya, give the guy a break,” I said.

  He ignored me. “So Bevvy, are you goin’ with that guy now or something?” Butch asked.

  The room was suddenly filled with two hundred voices, singing in lots of different keys.

  “What’s it to you?” she asked.

  “Ya, turn around, and don’t sing, Butch,” I said.

  “Too bad Mowgli’s not here. We’d sound a lot better. We could do all that calypso and stuff. Maybe they’ll let us do ‘Yellow Bird’ for Palm Sunday, you know, with palm trees and stuff.”

  I picked both feet up off the floor and gave Butch’s chair a shove. This sent him just far enough forward to bang him into some eighth grade girl, who happened to be one of the real singers, not to mention a world-class moaner, the way eighth grade girls seem to be. The girl let out a good loud one, bringing the raggedy version of “I Just Had to Pray” to a painful halt. Which naturally brought Sister Jacqueline and her long waggy finger to Butchie.

  The organ music rose, like the backing track to some old horror movie, and as he was hauled away and Beverly and I shook hands, Butch threw me a glare. “Thanks, Riley,” he mouthed, using the name he prefers I’d use. Fair enough, I might say under the circumstances, except it was a lot harder and more mean than what I’d seen out of him before. He’d done as much to me lots of times, and I figured to be able to get away with more than this with him.

  “Hah,” Beverly said as the music whined once more. “Serves him right, the animal.”

  “Ya,” I agreed. “I mean, it’s none of his business, and you’re not going with Napoleon anyway.”

  There in the middle of all that sound of music, was a big fat silence.

  “Right?” I added, awkwardly.

  She was staring at me now. “What difference does it make?”

  Fair enough question. There was something, a feeling, swirling around in my belly, though. Wasn’t good. Wasn’t familiar. Whatever it was, I probably had no business feeling it.

  “Nothing,” I said. “No difference. Forget about it.”

  Beverly wasn’t the forget-about-it kind. Something else she had in common with Napoleon.

  “What, Richard, it’s one thing when you spend time with him but when I do it there’s something wrong? What’s he, not my type? Is that it? That better not be it, Richard. I hope it’s just something stupid like you’re jealous of him... or of me. ...”

  It felt like it didn’t even matter what was right anymore. With every word my head sank lower like a whipped dog’s. “I’m sure it’s something stupid, Beverly. I guarantee it’s just something stupid.”

  “Mmm,” she said. “Well, smarten up, Richard. Quickly.”

  What else could I say? “Okay. I’m smartening up.” I even believed that was true. I wasn’t unteachable after all.

  We left it there. We both tried to join the singing for real, which was a mistake. People started looking at us. We went back to miming.

  “I wonder where he is anyway,” Beverly said. “This is two days in a row. I hope he’s all right.”

  “I think he’s fine,” I answered. “He was on the field with me every afternoon for the whole week, before this.”

  She turned, and lightly bopped me off the side of the head. “You psycho. Have you been dragging that poor guy out in this miserable weather every day to play baseball?”

  “It has not been mis—”

  “Not for you, it hasn’t. ’Cause you’re a mutant baseball-demented polar bear, Riley. Napoleon is from a tropical climate. He’s only been here for a few months. You could kill him, forcing him to be like you.” She bopped me again.

  “I didn’t force him,” I said. “He loves to play. Why else would he
?”

  “Because he has basically no friends, other than us.”

  “Oh, that isn’t even true,” I said, with no evidence to back me up. In fact, I knew what she said was true. But he had me, I figured, and we had fun.

  “You need to start wearing your batting helmet more, Richard. You’re a little out of it, and I think you’re getting worse.”

  “No, really, if Napoleon has no friends it’s because he doesn’t want any. Why else would it be?”

  “Well, this isn’t really a very friendly place, is it? You might even say it can be hostile. Or mean.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little strong, Beverly? It’s got its problems, but... I mean, I’ve been in this school for—”

  As nuns can do, Sister Jacqueline appeared like a puff of smoke, leaning right down in front of my face. “You will be next, Mr. Moncreif, unless you stop chatting, and start mouthing the words to this hymn.”

  Even she knew about the miming.

  It was all business from that point, but there was no shortage of facemaking between Beverly and me. She kept going back to one in particular, where she would wrinkle her brow, tsk-tsk me, and screw down one side of her mouth, to point out how clueless I supposedly was.

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” I whispered when the coast was clear enough. I made an effort to keep mouthing the approximate words everyone else was singing, while still getting out the words I was thinking. I must have looked like one of those dubbed Godzilla movies.

  “Of course you don’t,” Beverly answered, doing the same thing. And yes, she did look like the Godzilla movies. “You think it’s wonderful here because it is wonderful for you here, because you have been here forever. You think everything will be great as long as you keep teaching Napoleon baseball in the daytime and taking him to boring baseball movies at night.”

  “Hey,” I snapped, stretching it out to look like I was snapping “Hallelujah,” “I think it’s a good thing to show him our national pastime, instead of dragging him to see The Great Waldo Pepper like you would probably do.”

  “You know, I would love to take him to The Great Waldo Pepper. But guess what I would do first? I would ask the guy what he wanted to see.”

  She had done it now. I didn’t quite know how she had done it, but she had.

  “He loved the movie,” I said loudly, blowing my cover completely. “He loved Bang the Drum Slowly.”

  I did not notice the music dying down, but I did notice the voice speaking to me.

  “Mr. Moncreif,” Sister Jacqueline said, “lend me your ear.” And before I had the chance to lend it to her or not, she took it, hard.

  As we sat there in the office, no sound happening other than the organ and voices off in the distance, the feeling between Butchie and me was weird. We just stared for the longest time.

  “’Tsamatter with you lately?” I asked finally.

  “’Tsamatter with you lately?”

  “What are you talking about, Butch?”

  “You too good to hang out with us anymore? Where you been? What you doing?”

  “I been around. I been doing stuff.”

  “Not with me you ain’t.”

  “Oh. Oh, I get it. You mean baseball.”

  “Well, duh. You don’t do nothin’ else.”

  “Oh I do loads else, don’t give me that. Anyway, I’ve been playing almost every day, so I don’t know what you’re moaning about.”

  “Ain’t been playing with me. Ain’t been playing with Quin or nobody else I know of. We ain’t been playing any ball.”

  “Napoleon’s been throwing to me,” I said. “He’s not afraid of the weather like the rest of you guys. You know you can come on down anytime you want to. You know where we are.”

  “Nnn,” he said, shaking his head. “Your friend wouldn’t like that. He’s too good for us. Don’t want to dirty his hands with neighborhood trash like us.”

  “That’s just stupid, Butchie, and you—”

  “He don’t mind handling our girls, though, huh?”

  I practically spat on him, laughing. “Our girls? I didn’t even realize we had any girls. Jeez, you think I’d notice a thing like that.”

  Butchie’s always-shaky sense of humor was all the way gone these days. He got up, walked across the bit of carpet between us, and stood over me. I stayed in my seat, staring up.

  “You know what I’m talking about, Riley. Guy like that, comes in here out of noplace—”

  “Dominica. Not noplace, Dominica. It is a place. An island, actually.”

  “Comes in here, to our place, starts looking down his nose at scumbags like me, brings in his smartass father to show off even more, then goes after the... local girls, like he’s just picking one more banana off his own personal tree.”

  I stood up. I still had to look up at him. “What’s this thing you got with bananas lately?”

  I wanted him to laugh, to see how stupid this all was. And I wanted him to shut up. People don’t have to be perfect for life to go on okay, they just have to be good enough. They just have to not be awful.

  And even while I was saying it to myself, I knew it was already too late. And I knew he couldn’t keep it to himself just because I wanted it that way.

  “I hate bananas,” he said, real nasty, real close. His breath stank, like bacon gone raunchy.

  “Are the two of you going to be a full-time job for me today?” Sister said as she stepped in between us. “I don’t know what has gotten into you, but get it the hell out, right now.” She used the word “hell” regularly and freely, and in many different ways, which I admired.

  “Yes, Sister,” we both answered.

  “Now the two of you get back to the class, and tell them I will be along in five minutes so get busy in the meantime.”

  “Yes, Sister.” We sounded like zombies.

  We walked back to class, near each other, but not really together. We didn’t talk until we were about to go through the door. I put a hand on his shoulder as he peeked through the window and made a face at everybody. He stopped, turned, and stared at the hand before looking at my face.

  “You know, Butch, you’ve only been here since halfway through last year yourself, so as far as I’m concerned you’re about as foreign as Napoleon.”

  I thought I was reasoning with him.

  He took a deep loud breath through his nose, then removed my hand from him like it was a snotted-up Kleenex.

  “How stupid are you, Riley?” he asked and then walked through the door.

  I was getting pretty sick of that question.

  IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

  WHEN I CALLED HIM on the phone I was again surprised at how islandy Napoleon could sound if all you had to focus on was his voice. He sounded older too. And right now, a lot slower.

  “Hey,” I said. I wasn’t a natural with the phone.

  “Richard? Is that you?”

  “Ya. How’s it going?”

  “Well. I haven’t been well. Not well a’tall. Getting better, though.”

  It never took me long to run low on conversation on the telephone. “Hey. You’re good on the phone, huh? Like a different guy. Like a pro.”

  “Thank you, I suppose.”

  “So,” I said. “Just kind of wondered, y’know, where you were, how you were, that kind of thing. Been missing some pretty funny choir practices, you know.”

  Napoleon sighed. He was sounding sadder than I had figured, what with the vacation from school and all.

  “I am sorry to be missing them,” he said. “I will not be missing the performance, though.”

  “You sound like you want to do it. But that couldn’t be true.”

  “I do. Very much so. I love music.”

  Huh? This was news. This was such news, and while being weird and interesting, it felt to me suddenly sad. If, like Beverly said, he didn’t have any other friends, then shouldn’t I have been the guy knowing things like this? Even if I didn’t much want to know about his music, I
would still want him to tell me about it.

  “You do? Really? How come I never knew that? What kind of music? Not church music.”

  “Yes. I love church music. Also James Brown, and the Ohio Players. Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. Organ music of all kinds, I love.”

  Way out of my league now. But I had to try. “Ever hear John Kiley? He’s the guy who plays that really loud organ at Fenway. And did you know he’s the same guy who plays for the Bruins and Celtics at the Garden? Now that’s talent, huh?”

  He waited. I thought I had carried that off pretty well, but in the break it occurred to me that he could be laughing with his hand over the phone. Or gagging or something.

  “I will go hear him sometime,” Napoleon said politely. I was grateful for those manners of his. But still, this did not feel quite right.

  “Can I say something?” I asked.

  “That is about all one can do on the telephone.”

  “Well, you don’t sound good. I mean, you don’t sound sick, but you don’t sound so... good.”

  Pause. Longer pause. “I am. I am... good. Thank you.”

  “You’re... welcome. Did I do something wrong, Napoleon?”

  “No.”

  “You mad about something?”

  “No.”

  “You want to tell me something?”

  “No.”

  “Something happen to you that I should know about?”

  “No, and no, and no. Don’t you ever... Richard, don’t you ever have those days when you’re just feeling down? It is normal, no? They come and they go, don’t they? Doesn’t that happen to you?”

  I actually had to give this some thought. Had to kind of search around in my insides for something loose in there. I did as thorough a search as I could.

  “No,” I said. “I have to be honest with you. No. Sure, I have a beef here and there like anybody. But you know, I don’t mostly feel like I have a lot to gripe about.” I shrugged, even though that wouldn’t contribute much to the conversation. “My life’s pretty okay, as far as I can tell.”

  This produced our longest pause yet. Felt like it was nearly as long as the talking part of talking.

  Stupid, stupid, Richard. It was as if I was looking for the most unhelpful thing to say. “Of course you don’t think things are so bad here,” was what Beverly had told me. I had it all here, and I knew it. Napoleon did not, and I knew that too.