“He is?”
“Very pleased. He wants you to go in and see him. Your mother and I can wait here or we can go with you. Either way.”
“I don’t want to go alone,” Figgrotten said.
“Fine, we’ll all go. You’ll see, it’ll be fine.”
Even though she now felt sweaty, she kept on her hat and brown wool coat and got up and followed her mother and Mr. Stanley to room 543. When they got there, the two grown-ups stood to the side and let Figgrotten go first. She stepped into the little room and the very first thing she saw was Alvin’s Greek fisherman’s hat sitting on the bureau across from the bed. And when she turned and looked at him, it was worse than she had imagined. For there he was, looking tinier then he’d ever looked before, propped on a pillow. If she could have turned and fled, she would have. But her feet were already there in front of his bed, like two blocks of concrete dumped onto the floor.
“It’s that bad?” Alvin said. His voice sounded gargly, like he needed to cough up some junk. “You look as scared as a cat just seen a coyote.”
Figgrotten took a shaky breath in. “Are you better, Alvin?”
“Oh, I surely am. Surely. But I’m old as the hills, don’t forget. Now, can you do me a favor, Miss Pauley? You see that book over there by the window? Could you bring that over to me? I’ve been thirsting for that ever since they took it away from me last night.”
Figgrotten picked up the book. It was a library book with a plastic cover. “Why’d they take it?” she asked.
“Well, they don’t know that that book is my lifeline. They just think it’s a book, and it was in their way when they were doing something to me, so they put it over there.”
Figgrotten handed him the book and he took it and sighed happily and held it against his chest. If he couldn’t cross the room to pick up the book, then he surely couldn’t drive the school bus, Figgrotten thought with a sinking heart.
“I’m very happy you came to see me. So, now tell me, my friend, how are those birds of yours? And how’s your sister? You see, I have lots of questions. Sit down right there and talk to me.” He pointed with his bony hand at the chair next to his bed. She knew his hands well from seeing them hold the steering wheel for years, and they looked different now. Smoother and thinner. He’d been in the hospital for only a day, but he looked so different. “I have a clogged-up throat, so you’ll need to do some of the talking.”
“Um…” Figgrotten still hadn’t moved and she was trying to unwrinkle her brow, which she could feel was all scrunched up with worry. Alvin needed to shave; his beard had come in in patches, which gave his whole face a grayish color. And the smell of pee was now worse.
“Sit,” he said again.
Figgrotten took a breath and sat down in the chair. She only wanted to talk about him. To ask him if he was going to get all better. But she knew that was not what he wanted.
“Well, um, the crows still don’t come when I whistle,” she said.
“Time,” Alvin said in his watery voice. “I bet they will learn.”
“And as for my sister, she’s okay, I guess. We don’t get along too well.” Figgrotten paused and took a breath. She could never have said this to him on the bus. But here she was, telling him this now. He wanted to hear more, as he was looking at her inquisitively. “Oh, and there was a substitute bus driver this morning. Alvin, she was terrible.”
Alvin was now looking up at the ceiling, thinking. His hands were folded together on his chest and he kept nodding.
“I think you should read some Barry Lopez books,” he suddenly said. “He writes about nature. I think you’d like him. And then when you get older, you can read a little Thoreau. Now, as for your sister, she’s experiencing the world in a different way than you. That is plain to the naked eye. But here’s what I say: Never forget that everyone needs plenty of understanding. Just as you do. And as I do. People are very different, but they are very, very similar too. Everyone has one of these.” Alvin used one of his hands to thump at his heart.
He stopped and coughed a little, then turned and gazed out the window. Figgrotten could see his eyes take on a distant look. “I like to think of you up in your rock world, Miss Pauley. Now, that is a thought that I have always enjoyed.”
Then he turned and looked at her, smiled, and gave his head a little nod. He reached out his hand to her and Figgrotten took it. It was so smooth and small but it wasn’t warm. It was nearly icy. “Oh, Miss Pauley,” he said.
Then he took his hand back and clasped it again over his book on his chest and closed his eyes. Figgrotten sat on the edge of her chair. She wasn’t sure what to do now. Finally she whispered, “Alvin?” but Alvin lay there with his mouth cracked open a little and his breath pulling in sharply and letting go in big tough-sounding gusts.
From behind her, Figgrotten’s mom whispered, “He must be tired, Frances. He needs to rest. I think we should probably go. We can come back again.”
Figgrotten stood looking down at Alvin. “Okay,” she said. Then she crossed the room, picked up his hat, and brought it back over to his bed. Very quietly she placed it next to him on the pillow. She knew he’d want that with him too.
She leaned and read the title on the spine of the book and whispered out loud to herself, “The Poems of William Shakespeare.”
“I’ll talk to you later, Alvin,” she said, and stood for a minute looking at him before she turned and followed her mom out of the room.
Mr. Stanley was out in the hall, leaning against the wall, when they came out, and the three of them walked down the hall together. This time no one said anything.
When she got home that afternoon, she could barely whistle as she dumped out the bread crumbs for the crows. She sat down shivering on her rock and stared into the woods. Mr. Stanley had been right, it was better to know than to let your mind wonder. She now knew that when the bus came to pick her up tomorrow, Alvin would not be there pulling open the door and smiling at her. But knowing wasn’t easy either. Knowing made her pull her hat down even lower than usual, almost over her eyes, so she couldn’t look out, she could only look down at her feet and her knapsack, which, today, she didn’t have the heart to open.
For the next few days, when she thought about Alvin there in the hospital, she felt panicked and miserable. She tried to distract herself by focusing extra hard on her homework, but her mind kept going back to him lying there in that bed, looking so thin and fragile.
And the substitute bus driver, Mrs. Schlosser, just made it worse. Not only was she a lousy driver given to going too fast and grinding the gears constantly, she was also irritable and short-tempered. She kept pulling the bus over to the side of the road and turning around and hollering with a beet-red face, “You better sit down in the back or we’re not going anywhere!” Little did she know this was not a threat to the kids in the back. Not going anywhere meant not going to school, which was music to their ears. Figgrotten did not care either way.
She would use these moments to turn in her seat and see that Ben Ekhart was now always seated quietly next to Christinia. They both looked as awkward as could be, sitting there not talking to each other. But again, Figgrotten couldn’t have cared less. She turned and sat staring out the window, aware that James was sitting behind her with his head in his stupid book. But he didn’t matter. There was only one thing that mattered. Alvin.
“Is there any news?” she kept asking her mom. “Can’t you call someone and see if he’s better?”
So her mom did call Alvin’s friend Madeleine Stroble, the librarian at the Preston Public Library, and asked if she knew anything. Madeleine said there was no new news. Alvin was still weak and still in the hospital.
“If I don’t hear anything else in the next couple of days, I’ll drive back over and try to see how he is,” her mom told her.
At night, in bed, Figgrotten found herse
lf again clutching her hands together under her chin. Not praying. But hoping. Hoping with everything she had that Alvin was going to be okay.
During the day, in the classroom, she stared out the window and made little bets with herself. If I see a crow fly through the sky, I’ll know Alvin is going to be fine. And always, if she watched the sky for long enough, a crow would indeed fly into view and she’d let go a big breath of air that she hadn’t even known she was holding, and for a few moments she’d feel relieved until it wore off and she went back to worrying.
* * *
—
On Friday Mr. Stanley took everyone in the classroom for a “speed walk” around the perimeter of the school building. He did this to define the word perimeter but also, as he put it, to “shake things up” because he felt like everyone in the class was getting “slouchy.” Figgrotten normally loved a nice fast walk out in the fresh air, but today she fell to the back of the group and plodded along. Her feet felt heavy, as if she was wearing boots filled with water. Mr. Stanley, who had been in the lead, slowed down and waited for her to catch up to him. Then he just walked along beside her. He didn’t ask her how she was. She knew he knew.
When they arrived back in the classroom, Mr. Stanley clapped his hands and said, “Okay, folks, now we’re going to make a few changes in our seating.” There was a loud groan from pretty much everyone, Figgrotten included. She was very attached to her seat by the window, and the idea of giving it up practically made her teary.
“First off,” Mr. Stanley said, “let’s rearrange the chesks so that we’re in a circle for a change. Then I’ll let you know who sits where.” Chesks was Mr. Stanley’s word for the chairs with the desks attached.
The kids reluctantly moved their chesks into a big circle, which was a horribly loud and screechy process. Then Mr. Stanley got out a piece of paper that he had written on already and pointed out where each assigned seat was. Figgrotten was, in fact, no longer next to the window, but at least she didn’t have her back to the window and could see out. She was seated next to Fiona and Gordie, and when she plopped down in her seat the feeling of misery grew inside her. She hated this. Hate, hate, hated it. She liked being over by the window, where she was alone. Where she could drift off and no one would really notice. Here she was being looked at by everyone and she now had to look right back at them. And, of course, it was her luck that directly across from her was James. Wearing his army jacket, slumped down deep in his seat, keeping his eyes to the ground. She loved Mr. Stanley, but she didn’t like that he had done this.
Mr. Stanley handed back everyone’s two-paragraph essays on the word civilization. Figgrotten had written hers last week up on the rocks. It had been the part of the homework that day that she had liked the most. Hers had started out, “Without civilization, there would be a lot of fighting.”
Now she looked down at her paper and turned it over and read on the back Mr. Stanley’s perfect writing. It said, “As always, Frances, you’ve reached deep here and you’ve expressed many interesting thoughts, but I think you can go even further next time around, bringing all the different ideas into more of a focused ending. But, good job.”
Figgrotten felt herself frowning. She worried that Mr. Stanley hadn’t liked what she’d written.
Then Mr. Stanley said, “Now, everyone, I decided to choose one essay to read aloud to everyone, as I think it works in many ways.”
And he began to read.
Figgrotten didn’t look up. Nor did she listen.
She kept her eyes on her own essay so she wouldn’t have to see that it was, of course, James’s essay that was not on the desk in front of him but rather in Mr. Stanley’s hand, being read out loud in a voice Figgrotten recognized. A voice that was pleased and impressed and that, in the past, Mr. Stanley had used only for her work.
This was definitely the very worst week of Figgrotten’s life. She could feel she was barely holding herself together at the moment. If she so much as ventured to think about Alvin, she knew she was going to break down and start crying.
But luckily, when Mr. Stanley was done reading and had turned around, Figgrotten heard something next to her that snapped her from her bad mood. It was a puff of breath released by Fiona. It was a sound of exasperation that normally no one would be able to hear, but Figgrotten heard it, all right. It was a sound she would have liked to have made herself but hadn’t. She glanced sideways just in time to see Fiona look at her and roll her eyes. And suddenly Figgrotten knew she was not alone. Fiona felt like she did. James was the star student now, and it was hard to take.
But the amazingly wonderful thing was what Figgrotten felt happen right there and then. Just from that tiny exchange, it was as if a little bridge had formed between her and Fiona. Figgrotten felt something light up inside her. And when she put away her paper, she realized suddenly she was not thinking about James or even Alvin; she was thinking about Fiona, and she was almost smiling.
She was still thinking about all this later that afternoon when she plopped into her seat on the school bus behind the dumpy dumb Mrs. Schlosser and turned to look out the window.
In fact, she was still lost in these thoughts several minutes later, when she suddenly realized that all the chatter on the bus had stopped and everyone was silent. Figgrotten looked up and saw Mrs. Flynn, the principal, standing at the top of the steps in front of everyone. The principal never came on the bus unless the kids were in big trouble. For being too rowdy, too loud, or whatever—always something bad. Mrs. Flynn was wearing her usual tweed jacket and skirt and her usual blue eye shadow that looked a bit smudged, but today she didn’t have the irritated expression that Figgrotten had seen her with so often.
“Girls and boys,” Mrs. Flynn said in a kind voice, one that Figgrotten did not recognize. “I have some sad news to deliver to you all.” Figgrotten felt something inside her body drop. As if her whole stomach just fell right down onto the floor. Then she was flooded with a horrible panicked feeling. “Your bus driver, Alvin Turkson, passed away this morning in Fairview Hospital. He was eighty-three years old.” Mrs. Flynn paused and took a breath. Then, very slowly, she shook her head. “Imagine that. He drove this bus for over thirty years, and really, until this week, when he became ill, he barely missed a day. I know you all were very fond of him. It is never easy to say goodbye to a friend. We’ve just called and also sent an email out to all of your parents. So please, go home and talk to them about your feelings. Monday in school, we’ll gather and do more of the same. Mr. Turkson, I know, will be greatly missed. In the meantime, Mrs. Schlosser will bring you all home. I’m terribly sorry to deliver this sad news to you all.”
She turned slowly and climbed down off the bus, and the silence that followed as Mrs. Schlosser closed the door and the bus began to move was complete. Only the sound of the bus rolling out onto the road could be heard. Not one person said a word the whole drive. Not the bad kids in the back. Not the smaller kids in the front.
Figgrotten was still barely breathing. She was in the same frozen position that she had taken as soon as she knew what Mrs. Flynn was going to say. Even the words had not gone into her head. And certainly not the thought that Alvin had died. That thought was shut out like a bee trying to sting her through a piece of glass. The only thought that she had was this: No. No. No.
* * *
—
When the bus arrived at their house, Figgrotten’s mom was standing on the porch in a heavy sweater, clutching her arms around herself. Figgrotten thought her mom looked like she’d maybe been crying. Christinia got off before Figgrotten and rushed up the porch steps right past her mom. She threw open the front door, and a second later Figgrotten heard her racing up the stairs. But her mom came rushing down to Figgrotten and put her arms around her and they stayed like that for a long minute.
“Oh, honey,” her mom finally said. “It’s just very, very sad. Alvin was su
ch a wonderful friend.”
But Figgrotten couldn’t even nod. Something had locked up hard inside her.
“Frances, let’s go inside and sit in the kitchen.”
Figgrotten shook her head. “I have to go be on the rocks. I need to be” was all she could get out.
Her mom hugged her again.
“Okay, sweetie. I better go check on your sister. I think she’s probably very upset as well.”
It was the first time Figgrotten even considered that Christinia might be sad about Alvin too. After all, Alvin had been especially kind to Christinia as well for years. Even more years than he was to Figgrotten.
She walked into the house and stood at the bottom of the stairs while her mother went upstairs and into Christinia’s room. She was glad the door was open a little so she could listen in.
At first there was quiet but then there was an outburst and Christinia cried out, “I didn’t get to say goodbye like Frances did, Mom! Why didn’t anyone tell me he was dying?”
“We didn’t know, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”
And then Christinia began to cry. Howling was more like it, like she was in pain, which gave Figgrotten a desperate frightened feeling and made her own throat tighten up hard so that it hurt. She turned and walked into the kitchen, grabbed the bread crumb bag her mom had left her, then went outside and up to her rocks. Though the day had started out sunny, it was now gray and gusty and cold. The wind seemed to be high up in the pine trees, and when Figgrotten closed her eyes it was the wind she heard, a soft roaring noise. She was shivering horribly, shivering more than she had ever shivered, and she sat with her arms wrapped around herself. She wasn’t going to think about Alvin being dead. She could not think it. She sucked in several big gulping breaths to try to get rid of the feeling. Then she just sat for a long while staring down at her shoes and trying not to think. She felt sick and awful and terrible. And she couldn’t move. But she did not shed a tear. She knew if she started crying, there was no way she could ever stop.
The Heart and Mind of Frances Pauley Page 7
