Armstrong and Charlie

by Steven B. Frank

  “I’m nobody’s girl. And I’m leaving because you guys are gross.”

  She gets up from the chair and looks at me.

  “Charlie?”

  My name on her lips. She’s asking me to go with her because she knows I’m afraid of lizards, knows the last thing I want to do is hurt one.

  What she doesn’t know is how much I look up to Keith and want to be in his club.

  The gate latch clicks behind her.

  “We don’t want a girl to see this anyway,” Keith says. He tears off three sheets of the newspaper—​the comics and a few pages of the classifieds. I catch a glimpse of Jughead and Veronica from the Archie strip.

  Keith spreads out the pages on the table and says, “Roll up the comics, Charlie Ross, into a big cone.”

  I grab hold of Archie’s arm and start rolling. Soon I’m holding a cone.

  “Twist the bottom shut.”

  I do.

  Keith turns to Randy and Tim.

  “True or false: lizards can read.”

  Randy nods. “He’s a pretty smart lizard. I say true.”

  “Drop him in and let’s find out.”

  Randy holds the net six inches above the paper cone in my hand. With a swift jerk of his wrist, he tips it over and shakes the lizard out of the net and into the cone. There’s a wild scratching sound, like tree branches at a window in a storm.

  “False,” says Keith.

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s not laughing at the comics.”

  But we are at the joke.

  “True or false: lizards can scream.”

  Nobody answers.

  “Charlie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Keith pulls out his pocketknife and a wrinkled book of matches. He uses the knife to widen the hole in a Coke can. Then he slides the matches across the table to me.

  I feel dizzy and confused. Is he asking me to set the lizard on fire?

  “This is how you build confidence, Charlie Ross. You walk right into your biggest fear … and out the other side.”

  Keith takes the cone from my hand.

  “Go on. Light a match.”

  I pick up the book of matches, fold back the cover, and peel one off. I strike the match. It goes out in my trembling hand.

  I strike another. The lizard scurries up the cone, looking for a way out. Keith shakes it back down. The boys are waiting, watching me. I’m watching the flame, wondering what’ll happen if I do nothing. After six seconds or so, the flame will burn out. The people who made the matches planned it that way so your finger won’t get burned. But it also gives you time to decide if you really want to light a fire. You’ve got those six seconds to change your mind.

  The flame is creeping toward my finger, and I can feel its heat. I can feel the heat from the boys, too. They’re waiting for me to set the lizard on fire. True or false, they want to know, is Charlie Ross a wuss, or one of us?

  The match goes out in my hand.

  “Give me the frickin’ matches,” Tim says. “I’ll do it.”

  “No,” I say. “I will.”

  I strike a third match.

  “True or false,” I say. “Lizards can scream.”

  The boys watch as I touch the burning match to the newspaper cone. The edge blackens, then curls into flame. The lizard scuttles up the side of the paper, and Keith shakes the lizard down one last time before setting the cone into the empty can.

  We stand back and watch the comics burn.

  True or false: lizards can scream.

  False. They can’t.

  Halfway through dinner, the phone rings. Mom answers, and here’s what I hear:

  “This is the Ross residence, yes … You did? … Where? … Are you sure? … Which Mr. Ross? Oh, I see. What time? Really? Yes, we’ll be by to pick it up tomorrow. Thank you for calling.”

  She puts down the phone and looks straight at me.

  “What was that about?” my father asks.

  “That was a man who lives on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. He was getting his mail this afternoon when he found a wallet in the gutter by his house. The ID card says it belongs to Mr. Ross.”

  My dad reaches down and checks his back pocket.

  “My wallet’s right here,” he says.

  “Mr. Charlie Ross.”

  I get a tight feeling in my belly. Probably how that lizard felt when Keith caught him.

  In the garage, Dad hoists my bike up to the rafters with a rope. He ties the loose end of the rope to a hook on the wall. He knots it. He triple knots it. The bike swings from that rope like a convict.

  “You see where your bike is hanging now?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where it’s going to stay for a while.”

  “Until next week?”

  “Longer than that.”

  “Next month?”

  “You put yourself at great risk today. Once again you used poor judgment. Mulholland Drive, with those blind curves? Laurel Canyon? No sidewalks. Speeding cars. That hill! You could have been killed, Charlie.”

  I bow my head. “I guess I wasn’t thinking,” I say.

  “Well, with your bike off-limits, you’ll have plenty of time to think now.”

  “Until spring break?”

  “Until you’ve earned it back by working for ten Saturdays at Ross Rents.”

  I turn and walk out of that garage. I don’t want my father to see me cry.

  · 10 ·

  Armstrong in the House

  Charlie

  ON THE DAY MRS. WILSON visits our classroom, even Mr. Mitchell sits up straight in his chair. It’s the twenty-fourth of February, and the black-haired no-nonsense principal of Wonderland Avenue School interrupts our math drills to make an announcement: “The sixth-graders are going on a field trip.”

  Field trips are cool. Field trips give us a half day off from Mr. Mitchell’s prison. They give us a ride on the long kind of school bus, an excuse to sing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer,” and a chance to bounce around in the back seats. Sometimes the buses take us to interesting places, too. We’ve been on a tour of the Los Angeles Times, where the news gets cast in rubber and mounted on a giant drum that looks like a ditto machine. We’ve been to the La Brea Tar Pits, where thousands of years ago woolly mammoths, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, and even a human—​the La Brea Woman—​were trapped in pools of oozing asphalt. We got to go whale watching once, but I took Dramamine and slept through the whole cruise.

  Where will the sixty-seat Crown bus take us this time? The Descanso Gardens? The Huntington Library? The Los Angeles Zoo?

  “You’ll be gone a whole week,” Mrs. Wilson says. “Saturday to Friday.” In every row eyes and mouths open wide. Heads spin around. Voices rumble through the room.

  Mrs. Wilson raises her hand for silence. “There’s a science camp in the Angeles National Forest. Every week during the school year, two schools are selected for a weeklong visit to the Clear Creek Outdoor Education Center. This year it’s Wonderland’s turn.”

  The class cheers. Mrs. Wilson’s hand comes up again for silence. She passes around a flyer and offers more details. “You’ll need to pack your own bedding, warm clothes, and toiletries. Your meals will be provided by the camp’s cafeteria. I expect you all, as ambassadors of our school, to be on your absolute best behavior.

  “The bus will leave from Wonderland early Saturday morning and return the following Friday in time for the afternoon buses home,” Mrs. Wilson continues. “But I need to ask your help for something. The regular school buses don’t run on the weekends, and not all of our new families this year have cars. So we’re looking for volunteers to invite Otis and Armstrong, and also Alma and Dezzy from Mrs. Valentine’s class, to spend Friday night in your house before the field trip. That way they’ll already be here in the Canyon for the early Saturday departure. Ask your parents, please, if they might be able to accommodate a guest for a sleepover that night.”

  The room is quiet. Arm
strong and Otis look at their laps.

  “Are there any questions?”

  There are thousands. Can we bring cameras? What if we don’t like the food? Is it cold enough up there to see your breath in the mornings? Do the showers have doors? I still sleep with a stuffed animal; should I leave him at home?

  What if nobody volunteers?

  But no one asks these questions out loud.

  At last, one hand goes up in back. “Mrs. Wilson?”

  We all turn around and look at Alex Levinson as he says, “Otis is my friend. I’ll ask my mom if he can stay with us Friday night.”

  “Thank you, Alex.”

  She looks around the room. Is it for a second volunteer?

  Shelley raises her hand. “Alma can sleep at my house.”

  “Thank you, Shelley. Make sure it’s fine with your parents.”

  Mrs. Wilson waits a little more. When no more hands go up, she quietly leaves the room.

  Armstrong

  “I don’t want to go on some school trip anyway,” I tell my family that night at dinner.

  There’s a heavy rainstorm on. You can hear it doing a drum dance on the gutters.

  “I’ll go for you,” Charmaine says.

  “You can’t go. You’re a girl.”

  “We’ve got practically the same face.”

  “You going to cut your hair and start wearing my clothes? All for a stupid science camp?”

  “He doesn’t want to go because none of the kids invited him to stay over on Friday night,” Lenai says.

  “Is that right, Armstrong?” Mama asks.

  I let my shoulder answer for me.

  “Son,” my daddy says, like he’s all experienced in these matters, “just because nobody volunteered on the first day doesn’t mean they won’t on the second. You’ve got to give them a chance to go home and ask their families. That’s the proper way to do things.”

  “Alex Levinson put his hand up for Otis.”

  “Guess you shouldn’t have kicked that white boy’s ass, then,” Ebony says.

  Charlie

  Whoever said girls can’t run faster than boys never got chased by Shelley Berman. She chases me around the schoolyard faster than a tetherball goes around a pole. The only thing that slows this girl down is the sign on the boys’ bathroom, which is where I’m hiding now, just to catch my breath.

  Mrs. Gaines, on the other hand, barges right in.

  “Charlie Ross, Principal Wilson would like to see you in her office. Before the morning bell.”

  What could I have possibly done wrong now?

  The office feels even scarier when the typewriter is quiet and the phone isn’t ringing. I knock on Mrs. Wilson’s closed door.

  “Come in,” she says.

  I go in. She tells me to sit. I sit.

  “This trip we’re planning to Clear Creek is an opportunity that comes once every seven years. I’d like all my sixth-graders to benefit from it, Charlie. That includes Armstrong.”

  Mrs. Wilson looks right at me over the top of her half-round glasses.

  “I know you and he have had some conflict this year.”

  Some? He took Ho Hos out of my lunch. He kicked my ass in front of the school!

  “But out of every conflict comes an opportunity.”

  She continues to look at me over the top of her glasses. “Armstrong will be staying at your house this Friday.”

  My house? Are you insane? Where? He can’t sleep in Lily’s room. That’s her private space. Andy’s room is out of the question. And there’s no way he’s sharing a room with me.

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Wilson,” I say. “Maybe I should ask my mom.”

  “Actually,” she says, “it was her idea.”

  Armstrong

  Friday afternoon, instead of getting on the long Crown bus, I hop on the short square one with Charlie Ross.

  My usual driver is Mr. Simms, who fits the exact description of Leroy Brown in that Jim Croce song. I’d rather meet a junkyard dog any day than mean old Mr. Simms.

  The gentleman driver of Ross’s bus, by contrast, seems like he should be delivering milk to all the white people around here before he drives their kids to school. Got them short sleeves and a Bic pen in the pocket. Glasses so clean you can see right through to his blue eyes.

  “Good afternoon, young fellow,” he says to me, all friendly and white. “Welcome to my bus.”

  “Thank you, Mister …”

  “Orr,” he says. “As in either-or, with an extra r.”

  “I’ll remember how to spell it,” I say. And Ross and I find ourselves a seat halfway back.

  You’d expect all the houses in one neighborhood to be more or less the same. But these homes don’t really fit together. Each is so different from the next, it’s what Mr. Khalil would call a hodgepodge of houses. There goes one like a French chateau with a stone lion in front. Across the street is a white cottage with a blue door. Here’s one with a red tile roof. Reminds me of Olvera Street, but it’s next door to a Brady Bunch house.

  I hope the people who live in these houses get along with each other better than the houses seem to.

  The bus chugs to the top of a hill. Out the window I see a girl standing on her skateboard, waiting for the bus to pass by. Soon as it does, she rides on.

  “We get off here,” Ross says.

  “Already? Might as well walk. You only got a five-minute ride.”

  “It isn’t safe to walk. There are no sidewalks until halfway up Greenvalley Road.”

  “You think this isn’t safe? You should see the walk home from my bus stop.”

  We go on down the street. There’s a Mercedes-Benz parked in one driveway, a Corvette in another. Every house got a yard. Every yard got a fence. Most with barking dogs on the other side.

  “Say, Ross, which one of these big houses is yours?”

  “This one.”

  We’re in front of a black and white two-story house with a steep roof and a chimney so tall I’m worried about hawks crashing. There’s a spread of grass and some flowers that look like rolled-up white flags standing on a hill.

  The garage has a basketball hoop stuck to it. Now I see where Charlie Ross gets his outside shot.

  Only way to describe the inside of his house is a big hug you weren’t expecting. The wood panels on the walls and the thick carpet on the floor make you want to kick off your shoes. Armchairs big enough for two and a leather couch that Wilt Chamberlain could stretch out on. The lamps and such are made out of brown wood your hand can’t help but stroke as you pass by. And there’s other things you’d like to touch but know you shouldn’t. Like the miniature painted houses all lined up on a shelf over the fireplace. I’ll bet Ross and his brother weren’t allowed to even hold a ball in here.

  We go into the kitchen, where a brown lady peels carrots at the sink.

  “Hola, Charlie,” she says. “Qué tal?”

  “Hola, Lily,” Ross says.

  Lily looks at me while Ross is searching for the Spanish word to say who I am.

  “Este es mi … mi …”

  “Amigo?” she says.

  “Yeah, amigo, I guess. His name’s Armstrong.”

  She gives me an hola too.

  Now Charlie Ross opens up the cabinet and I see his hand reach for a box of Ho Hos. He glances at me and smiles, and then his hand moves over to the Flaky Flix. Thin chocolate cookies with bumpy rice flakes on the top. I’ve never tried those, so I’m glad he passed by the Ho Hos.

  Ross pours out two glasses of milk and carries everything to the table. I see him dunk his Flaky Flix into the milk, so I try dunking mine too. It’s pretty good, but on the next cookie I don’t dunk because the milk takes away the crunch, and that’s the best part of a Flaky Flix.

  There’s a yellow poster on the wall, showing a flower and black writing that says WAR IS NOT HEALTHY FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS.

  “My daddy was in Korea,” I say.

  “Mine was in World War Two.”
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  “He get hurt?”

  “No. He was in the navy, clearing mines in the Pacific, but we dropped the bomb before he saw any action.”

  “My dad saw some, in Korea.”

  “Did he get hurt?”

  I think about the ways my daddy got hurt by war. A leg blown off. Friends he saw die. The Flashbacks.

  War is not healthy for children and other living things. That’s the truth.

  But what I say to Charlie Ross is, “Yeah, but he can still kick my ass.”

  He tells me his mom got the poster from her consciousness-raising group.

  “What kind of group?”

  “Consciousness-raising. It’s this group of moms in Laurel Canyon. They get together when the dads play gin. They try to raise their consciousness.”

  “What’s that mean, Ross? How do you raise somebody’s consciousness?”

  “By making them more aware, I guess.”

  “What do they talk about?”

  “I’m not allowed to listen in.”

  I just look at him and wait. When a person’s got a loose grip on a secret they want to tell, all you have to do is give ’em a small stretch of quiet, and they’ll let go.

  “Well,” Ross says, leaning in to whisper, “there’s this one lady whose husband is having an affair, but she won’t leave him because she doesn’t have money to live on her own. Another one has been drinking too much. They’re trying to help her quit.”

  “And you’re not allowed to listen in.”

  We’re about done with the Flaky Flix. I get up and start to clear my plate, but Ross says to just leave it on the table. “Lily will take care of it,” he says.

  “You know something, Ross,” I say. “You need to have your consciousness raised.”

  I carry my own plate to the sink. “Gracias, Armstrong,” Lily says.

  Charlie

  Armstrong asks to see the rest of the house. Maybe I can show him just the downstairs. That way he won’t think it’s so big. But then, what’ll I do tonight when we have to go to sleep? My room is upstairs.

  We head into the living room. He stops to look at Mom’s painting on the wall. It’s of the calla lilies that grow in our backyard. Andy used to cut them for her every Mother’s Day. He doesn’t just look at the painting. He leans forward and sniffs it.

  “What are you doing?”