“Well, where did you get it from?”
And he said, “I cannot tell a lie, Mrs. Gaines. I stole that Ho Ho from somebody else’s lunch. But before I unwrapped it, I looked across the table and saw Alex there about to eat some Space Food Sticks. I never tried those. Always wondered about them, too. Seen the ads on TV with the astronauts in space. And so I asked Alex if he’d like to trade. One Ho Ho for all the Space Food Sticks. He said he was tired of Space Food Sticks and would be happy to trade.”
“Well,” I said, “whose lunch did you take the Ho Ho from?”
And then Armstrong put up his finger like he was testing the direction of the wind. And down came that finger pointing directly at Charlie Ross.
Whereupon I escorted one boy to the nurse’s office and two to the principal.
Charlie
The principal’s office is the scariest place on the planet. Before you go in, there’s the smell of tardy slips and typewriter ink and the secretary’s hair spray. Not to mention the rubbing alcohol from the nurse’s office next door. Makes you run a fever even if you’re not sick. Meanwhile, you have to wait in those tiny plastic chairs against the wall. The whole world knows why you’re there. Then the secretary says in a really loud voice, “The principal will see you now.”
You feel like Dorothy walking up to Oz for the first time. Then you step through The Door of Doom.
That’s where Armstrong and I are now, on the other side of that door.
“Sit down, boys,” Mrs. Wilson says.
We sit in the hard wooden chairs in front of her desk.
Mrs. Wilson looks up from the Incident Report. She lowers her reading glasses and lets them dangle by a chain around her neck. The chain looks strong enough to hang a kid.
“Charlie Ross, do you know what a vigilante is?”
I shake my head because I don’t.
“It’s someone who takes justice into his own hands,” Armstrong says. “Someone who tries to catch a thief by setting a trap.”
Armstrong grins at me. Not because he knows the word, but because he knows which one of us it fits.
“That’s right, Armstrong,” Mrs. Wilson says. Her head turns back toward me. “This isn’t the Old West, Charlie. If you think someone’s stealing from you, you tell a teacher. You tell Mrs. Gaines. You tell me. Understand?”
I nod. It’s Armstrong’s turn. It better be Armstrong’s turn.
“Armstrong Le Rois, is it ever okay to steal?”
“No, ma’am.”
Now I get to grin at him.
“Unless …”
“Unless?”
“Suppose your uncle is talking about shooting himself on account of he lost his job and his wife ran off with another man. You go and steal his gun and hide it someplace he’ll never find. That’s stealing in order to save a life.”
Mrs. Wilson has a rubber-band smile too, just like Mom. She sighs and says, “An exception.”
“Or you steal the getaway car from a bank robber. That makes you a hero.”
“Another exception.”
“Or your mama’s been smoking and you don’t want to be an orphan, so you steal her cigarettes and flush ’em down the toilet—to save her life.”
Andy and I used to flush Mom’s cigarettes all the time.
“Cigarettes are a far cry from Ho Hos, Armstrong Le Rois, and you know it. I know you know it.”
Mrs. Wilson brings her glasses to her mouth and thinks. The school clock on the wall does its backwards tick and then its forward tock.
“Armstrong, the punishment for stealing is suspension for a day. Along with a letter of apology to Charlie on why what you did was wrong. Charlie, the punishment for being a vigilante is also suspension for a day. Along with a letter to Alex on why what you did was wrong.”
“Just Alex?” Armstrong says.
“Just Alex. You’re both not welcome back in school until you show me those letters. Signed by your parents.”
I take back what I said earlier. There’s one thing scarier than the principal’s office: my dad’s face when he finds out what I did. He tells me he’s appalled at my behavior. He can’t believe his son could be so negligent, thoughtless, irresponsible, and just plain dumb.
Each word is a slap in the face. But what he says next is the knockout blow. “What if Alex had been like Andy, a highly allergic child? Do you realize you could have killed him?”
I never thought of that. My father’s right. I’m all those things he said I was.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt Alex,” I say. “I was trying to hurt Armstrong.”
“It’s just as wrong.”
Dad takes a pen and adds “Ho Hos, 4 boxes,” to the shopping list. He then announces that Mrs. Wilson’s punishment didn’t go far enough. A more valuable lesson will be learned if I bring to school, as a “dual token of remorse and compassion,” four boxes of Ho Hos—two for Alex and two for Armstrong—which I have to pay for with a day of hard labor at Ross Rents.
“Four for Alex,” I say. “None for Armstrong. He’s the one who stole.”
“And it wouldn’t kill you to wonder why.”
Armstrong
“It’s Monday, Armstrong. Why are you not in school?”
Up on my shoulder sits a fifty-pound sack of Quikcrete, which my daddy made me carry half a mile from the hardware store. He said I’d be spending all of Suspension Day helping Mr. Khalil repair his front porch. “Hard physical labor,” he said. “That’s what you’ll do because you stole.”
Hard physical labor is easy compared to what I’ve got to do now—tell old Mr. Khalil why I’m here.
I try to come up with a holiday he might believe. But Halloween passed and it’s a week before Veterans Day. I don’t know when else you get a random Monday off, unless you’re Jewish like Charlie Ross.
No, the calendar will not get me out of this. I’ll give it to Mr. Khalil quick, the way I run in and out of the shower after my sisters use up all the hot water.
“I got s—”
“What?”
“I got sss—”
“Strep throat?”
“Worse than that.”
“Staph infection?”
“Worse than that.”
“Salmonella?”
“I don’t even know what that is. But what I got is worse.”
“What, then?”
“Suspended.”
“Suspended?!”
“It’s contagious. Charlie Ross got it too.”
“Why in the world did you get suspended?”
“It’s Ho Hos, Mr. Khalil. I’ve got a weakness for them.”
“So you went and stole one.”
“No, sir.”
“No?”
“I stole five. But the last one I traded for Space Food Sticks. That’s the Ho Ho Charlie Ross hid the hot sauce in. And that’s how we both caught the same disease.”
“Armstrong,” Mr. Khalil says, looking at me. “Armstrong,” he says again. “You took the easy way. The lazy way.”
“Are you disappointed in me?”
“Are you disappointed in yourself?”
Eyes have never been so heavy in a boy’s head.
Charlie
Ross Rents is on South La Cienega Boulevard, two blocks north of the Santa Monica Freeway, “so the deliverymen don’t lose time on their routes,” Dad always says. The neighborhood is mostly black, and whenever he puts a help-wanted ad in the paper, the people who live nearby line up to answer it. That’s how Nathaniel and Gwynne came into our lives. Gwynne is my dad’s Administrative Assistant, and Nathaniel is the Shop Manager and Transportation Director. Nathaniel is so tall that he has to bend down going through doors.
Most adults greet a boy by messing up his hair or patting his shoulder and saying, “Well, hello there, young man.” Nathaniel greets me by name and with something that makes the height difference between us seem small: a handshake. It’s no ordinary straight-on shake but a kind of secret shake in three steps. F
irst the hands meet at an angle, like they’re about to arm-wrestle. Then they slide into a regular grasp. Then they pull back until the curled fingers of one hand hook onto the curled fingers of the other, like a hinge. One time Nathaniel told me that this is the handshake of black men who think of themselves not just as friends, but brothers.
My job today, Suspension Day, is to polish the wheelchairs, walkers, and commodes that have been returned. Nathaniel’s job is to inspect them for damage and do the necessary repairs. There’s a bench radio in the store, tuned to 1580 KDAY. Nathaniel’s station. No sappy love songs, just ones with a good beat. The music helps me shine six wheelchairs and four walkers by the time noon comes around and Nathaniel says, “Let’s break for lunch, Charlie.”
At the long bench in the back of the store, we open our brown bags and eat. After we finish our sandwiches, I dig a little deeper in my bag and find a Ho Ho. Unwrapping it, I see Nathaniel glance at it like maybe he wants some, so I break it in half.
“Here,” I say. “Split it with me.”
“Thank you, Charlie.”
Half a Ho Ho in Nathaniel’s hand looks no bigger than a crumb. He lifts it to his mouth, then lifts it to his nose. He looks at me and winks.
“My dad told you what I did.”
Nathaniel nods and tosses the rest of the Ho Ho into his mouth. He chews slowly, and I can tell he’s got something on his mind.
“Your father’s a wise man, Charlie. But I’m not sure I agree with him on this one.”
“You wouldn’t make me work today?”
“Oh, I’d make you work. But not to reward a boy for stealing.”
“That’s what I think! If anything, Armstrong should work to buy me a box of Ho Hos.”
“Or his own.”
Nathaniel unscrews the cap on his thermos and pours. The back of the store smells like morning in our kitchen. “Armstrong came on the Opportunity Busing program, didn’t he?”
“You heard about it?”
“I read about it in the paper.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea?”
Nathaniel sips his coffee. He looks at me. Then he says, “I’m against it, Charlie.”
“Why?”
“Seems to me, the money they spend to put gas in those buses would be better spent to improve the schools. In all the neighborhoods.”
“Don’t you think black and white students should mix?”
“Maybe if the buses ran both ways. But I don’t see any white students getting up before dawn.”
I try to imagine what that would be like. Not just waking up early, but riding a bus all the way out of Laurel Canyon, down La Cienega, past Ross Rents and onto the Santa Monica Freeway toward downtown. After that the bus would head south on another freeway. How far would it go, I wonder.
“I guess it is a long ride for Armstrong to Wonderland every day,” I say.
“An even longer ride home,” Nathaniel says.
“Because of the traffic?”
“No, Charlie. Because of the way home looks after you’ve been gone.”
Armstrong
Tuesday after Suspension Day, I’m at my lunch table with a peanut butter sandwich.
“How come no jelly?” I asked this morning when my daddy snatched away the jar.
“Jelly is sweet,” he said. “Them Ho Hos you took gave your mouth enough sweet to last a lifetime.”
So now, just when I’m wishing for some dessert, guess what drops from the sky.
Two boxes of Ho Hos!
“Those are for you,” Charlie Ross says.
“What for?”
“It’s my punishment for getting suspended. My father made me earn them.”
Peanut butter and Ho Hos would be a fine mix. Like a Reese’s peanut butter cup, only soft all the way through. And my daddy would never even know.
But peanut butter and Ho Hos and charity from Charlie Ross would leave a bitter taste in my mouth all the way to the grave.
“No thanks,” I say, and walk away.
· 6 ·
Arm-Wrestling Armstrong
Charlie
ON THE FIRST MONDAY IN December, Armstrong announces he’ll be holding an arm-wrestling contest at the end of the week. The rules, his rules, are that he’ll sit on one side of a lunch table and all sixth-graders who think they’re somethin’ can line up for a chance to beat him. The entry fee will be twenty-five cents, which you have to drop into a Coke can that Armstrong’ll put on the table. If one of us—any one of us—can beat him, the entire contents of the can will be ours.
All week long the sixth-graders go without milk. I feel sorry for the milk monitor, who has to carry the heavy tray from the refrigerator to the lunch tables. Most weeks he sells out, and the walk back is a lot lighter. But this week nobody’s forking over the five cents a day for a carton of milk. By Friday, when the refrigerator should be empty, it’s full. And when our pockets should be empty, they’re also full—with five nickels.
Twenty-five cents. The price of glory.
Friday at lunch, Armstrong sets down an empty Coke can: open for business. The sixth-graders—all the girls and all the boys except Otis—form a line. I make sure I’m the last one in it.
By the time I belly-up to his table, Armstrong has brought down forty arms (forty-one if you count the two hands he let Shelley use). I feed my nickels into his can one at a time. There’s room only for three. The other two rest on top.
“Right hand or left?” he says.
“Right.”
Before we start, I want him to know that this challenger isn’t just another scrawny white boy from Laurel Canyon, but a husky, bench-pressing, whitewall-scrubbing, bad-ass white boy from Laurel Canyon. So I pull my short sleeve up over my shoulder and twist it under my arm like a tank top.
Armstrong looks at my bicep.
“Been lifting wheelchairs, haven’t you, Ross?”
“Yup.”
“Quikcrete weighs more.”
He pulls up his sleeve and shows me a bicep three times as big.
Our elbows hit the table and our hands come together. If you’ve ever had your blood pressure taken, you know how they strap that cuff around your arm and at first it’s snug but not too tight, but then the nurse squeezes the little bulb and the cuff gets tighter and tighter until it’s a cobra wrapped around your arm. Well, Armstrong’s grip is like that. It starts out all friendly and soft, but pretty soon I feel him squeeze my hand like he wants to crush it. But guess what. Tennis has given me a strong grip too. So I squeeze back just as hard. Armstrong’s eyes flash at me like he wasn’t expecting this. And my eyes flash back because neither was I.
Armstrong
Ross waited till the last minute ’cause he thinks I’ll be tired. What he doesn’t know is that when you’ve been twisting weeds by the bottom until you hear the roots crack, you’ve been building the kind of wrist strength that’s right for arm wrestling. And judging by all the nickels spilling out of my can, I’m about to get handsomely compensated, as Mr. Khalil would say, for all the yard work I did.
Trouble is, this boy’s arm is not going down easy. And the look in his eye says we’ve got some unfinished business to settle. I know what it is, too. He’s still mad ’cause he thinks I disrespected his brother.
And I’m still mad ’cause he disrespected me.
My arm’s got the advantage now. On the downward side of things—forty-five degrees if you know your geometry. But Leslie is cheering for Charlie Ross, and she’s got eyes for him that must have some kind of magic. Potion eyes, I’d call ’em, because now our arms are standing straight up, like a soldier.
“Go, Charlie, go!” Magic Girl screams. My arm starts leaning the wrong way, like the soldier just got shot.
Charlie
Our two arms are trembling in a black and white blur. I can feel the big vein in my neck bulging out. Every muscle in my body is tight.
“Come on, Charlie, you can do it!”
“Take him down,
Ross.”
“Charlie, I’m rooting for you.”
That’s Leslie, whose sweet voice is a shot of adrenaline. Armstrong’s arm is getting weaker. It’s going down! I’m winning!
“Go, Ross, go! Go, Ross, go! Go, Ross, go!”
The whole school is cheering me on. Even Mr. Mitchell is watching from his upstairs window. And Mrs. Gaines from her corner on the yard. I’ve got the momentum. I’ve got the advantage. Soon I’ll have a whole week’s milk money, times forty kids.
“Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!”
Armstrong leans in. I can smell the peanut butter on his breath.
“Say, Ross,” he says, his mouth inches from my ear. The veins in his neck are pulsing.
“What?” I grunt.
“Yo’ mama’s left titty callin’.”
“Huh?”
“Yo’ mama’s left titty. It’s callin’ you for a drink of milk.”
I can’t help it. My vein-popping concentration gives way to a smile, which turns to a snort, which spreads to a giggle, which explodes to laughter. Soon I’m laughing so hard my arm goes limp.
And gets slammed onto the table, belly-up like a dead fish.
The bell rings. Armstrong grabs his tin can. Coins rain into his pockets. And he jingles off to class.
Armstrong
Ninth of December and I’m in the Christmas spirit. At lunchtime I open up my box, and there’s more silver in there than Jim Hawkins found on Treasure Island.
Mrs. Gaines is flapping around the schoolyard like usual. But when she sees how my box shines, she lands right beside me.
“What have you got there, Armstrong?”
“Ho Hos, ma’am. Thirty-six of ’em. Barely fit in my lunch box.”
“Where are they from?”
“Market near my house. Don’t worry, Mrs. Gaines, they’re paid for. My own money, too.”
Her eyes bulge like the kind on a bath toy when tiny hands give it a squeeze.
“Would you like to have one?” I say.
I set one on the table in front of her. Her long red fingernail plucks at the tin foil and peels it back. She’s got the same color lipstick as her nails. I watch her red lips come apart and—well, you’d expect a proper lady like Mrs. Gaines, Yard Supervisor and all, to take a proper lady-size bite. But now it’s my eyes’ turn to bug out, ’cause here comes the hungriest bite of Ho Ho you ever saw. Half gone in one chomp.
Armstrong and Charlie Page 6
