But as I said, things are very different today. Actually, two things. First, the desks are rearranged, so two desks are side by side. Second, Caulfield Thomas Jones is sitting on Ms. D’s desk with his feet on her chair, his arms crossed, like the classroom is a beach and he’s the head lifeguard.
Ms. D is making everyone line up along the chalkboard. “We’re doing something very different today,” she says.
No kidding.
“And we have a special guest,” she adds, pointing to Caulfield Thomas Jones (from here on known as Caulfield). “Mr. Jones has come to talk about poetry and challenge us to participate in a friendly competitive exercise.”
Caulfield’s about six feet tall with short, curly brown hair and blue eyes, and he’s more hyper than Crash after four Reese’s Cups. It doesn’t look like he’s faking his love of literature, so you have to give him some credit, though Beanie’s leery of him because he thinks Caulfield’s English accent isn’t real, and because, according to Beanie, “The only thing worse than having a last name for a first name is having a last name for a first name and two more to boot.”
But Ms. D loves this guy, and they tend to make private jokes, then look goofy at each other.
The last time he visited, he laid out all these different things on the floor—a world map, a page from the sports section, an empty coffee cup from McDonald’s, some toy soldiers—and we were supposed to place them in a short story. That really threw Big Joe, but I liked it.
I can’t say I feel the same way about poetry. In fact, I’d rather have Big Joe give me a wedgie than listen to Caulfield Thomas Jones recite Shakespeare or whatever he’s planning today.
“This exercise,” Ms. D says, “will involve boys and girls working together in pairs.”
A collective groan goes up from the class, and Ms. D looks to Caulfield for support.
“It’s not as if you’re second or third graders,” he says, then addresses the boys, adding, “Girls are people too,” which makes Ms. D laugh louder than I’ve ever heard her laugh before.
Old Caulfield obviously has some weird ideas on how we feel about girls. We’re not afraid of them, and I don’t dislike Claudine or Paige because they’re girls but because they’re troublemakers. Which is why I’m nervous about being paired with one of them. I’m trying to decide which one would be my worst nightmare when Ms. D announces the first two victims.
“We’ll start with Benny,” she says, scanning a list of names on her desk, turning toward Caulfield, and saying, “Benny is the wordsmith I mentioned to you.” I make a mental note to look up “wordsmith” in Proteus, while she says, “And Benny will be working with . . . Sara Samuels.”
Man, did I luck out. Sara is a neutral, a shy, quiet girl. She’s the smartest kid in English class and has always had a crush on me, so I’m thinking she’ll go along with what I say.
Ms. D announces the rest of the names and we take our seats very quickly, so that Caulfield will have a half hour to do his thing. The only weird pairing is Big Joe and Paige, which gets a loud laugh from the class, since it’s like putting Shrek and Selena Gomez together.
Caulfield begins with some exercises on metaphor, writing on the board, “My love is a red rose” and “My love is like a red rose,” asking which one is a metaphor, which a simile. That’s easy and boring, but then things get interesting when he says, “How can your beloved, or love in general, be a red rose? Isn’t a red rose a red rose?”
Claudine pounces on that one. “It’s really a red rose,” she says, “but has things in common with love.”
“Can you explain that more clearly, young lady?” Caulfield says.
Claudine’s thinking hard, but it’s clear she doesn’t have a quick answer. I’m waiting, actually hoping, for her to blush, but I guess it’s not in her makeup.
Caulfield gives her a bit longer, then says, “Why don’t we ask the wordsmith?” I’m looking around the classroom, wondering who he’s talking about, until I remember it’s me. He points to the sentences again, leaping off Ms. D’s desk like he just sat on a wasp. “Let’s start with the literal things we associate with a rose.”
I think about this, then say, “A rose grows, it’s beautiful, it kind of glows in the sun.”
Caulfield’s really worked up now, writing each of my responses on the board, then asking the class what they have to do with love, and everyone begins to see the connections. “Love grows too,” Paige says.
“And it’s beautiful,” Sara adds, looking a little too longingly at me.
“And sometimes people blush when they’re in love,” Beanie says, not knowing he’ll take a pounding for that one later.
“But it also has thorns,” I say.
“Mr. Happiness to the rescue,” Claudine says, shaking her head disgustedly.
“But Benny’s right,” Caulfield responds, and I’m thinking, You go, Caulfield, surprised to discover this unlikely ally.
“What does love have to do with a thorny rose, Benny?”
“It can hurt,” I say.
“And that’s what makes this metaphor so powerful.”
I’m waiting for the class to lift me onto their shoulders and carry me to the cafeteria, where I’ll be fed a giant banana split, but no one but Caulfield seems overly excited, so he offers a few more metaphors, then moves to what he calls object poems, one cool one called “Hanger”:
Hanger
Protean instrument,
I bow curved-neck before you.
Yes, you are a child’s toy:
a metal bow for straw arrows,
a back scratcher, a toothless smile,
you old extended question mark, you,
I offer you in amazement
the shirt off my back.
He explains that like Proteus, the shape-shifting Greek god, a hanger, too, resembles many different objects and has many different purposes, and that the poet thinks this is so cool that he bows “curved-neck” to the hanger. “It’s a simple poem,” he says, “but after reading it, you’ll never look at a hanger the same way again.”
Finally, Caulfield gets to our assignment. We’re supposed to work with our partner to write a short object poem but not divulge the title, so he and the class can guess it at a later date. He also says he’ll give out a few prizes for the best poems. “You don’t have to write verse or rhymed poems,” he says. “You can write prose poems or even sentences,” and he gives us a few examples: “Snow that falls on a tree stump but doesn’t melt” (gray hair), “A black string in one’s path” (ants), and also a few poems written in short paragraphs.
Claudine isn’t very happy about Caulfield’s suggestions. “How can poetry be poetry if it doesn’t rhyme or have line breaks?” she says.
Caulfield smiles. “Isn’t poetry elevated language and interesting comparisons? Why can’t you have that in a sentence or paragraph?” Then he reads a description of a rainstorm from a novel, and it certainly sounds like poetry.
“Well, we’re not going to do that,” Paige says, staring down Big Joe, making it clear who’s going to run that group.
Ms. D, sensing the period is about to end, wraps things up by saying, “With the time remaining today, why don’t you brainstorm with your partner and choose an object you both feel is suitable. As Caulfield says, an object can be an animal or an emotion, or most anything.” Then she and Caulfield mosey off to a corner of the room and chat.
When Sara and I finally get down to business, she looks very concerned. “We’re not going to write one of those prose poems, are we, Benny?” I actually had assumed we were, stupidly forgetting that Sara probably takes poetry very seriously, first of all because she’s a girl, and second because, like Paige, she’s always scribbling something down in a journal. With my luck, it’s probably rhyming poetry.
“Why don’t we deal with that later?” I say.
She doesn’t seem too enthusiastic but agrees. After going through a number of possibilities, we decide on a worm, thinking if we can tu
rn that into poetry, we’ll knock their socks off. That choice was really Sara’s, but then I suggest a night crawler, those worms my grandfather and I catch at night before we go fishing. When it’s time to leave, Ms. D seems very pleased with the class, and at recess, Beanie and I tell Jocko about the assignment.
“Boy, I’m glad I’m not in her class,” Jocko says.
“It was actually pretty cool the way Caulfield described it,” I say.
“Caulfield? I thought you hated the guy.”
“I never said that.”
“You should listen to yourself sometimes.”
“Whatever, he was okay today.”
“He really was, Jocko,” Beanie adds.
Jocko starts laughing, then looks at me and says, “Incongruous.”
“What?”
“Irene and Aldo are an ‘incongruous couple’ because they don’t fit. It’s like a banana going out with an apple.”
“Very good, Jocko,” I say, thinking about Big Joe and Paige.
“Yeah,” Beanie says, “maybe you should write our poems, Jocko.”
“No thanks, I’m uptight enough about what to get Becky Walters for a birthday gift.”
“Birthday?” Beanie says.
“Yeah, her party’s next Saturday afternoon. You mean you guys weren’t invited?”
“Since when are girls inviting guys to their birthday parties?” I ask.
“Well, it’s happening now. She’s having a deejay and everything.”
“Like dancing?” I ask, my legs suddenly going numb.
“I guess, but I’m not going without you guys. I’ll tell Becky that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, knowing this is a party I don’t mind missing.
“Well, I’m going to check into it tomorrow.”
“When did you get your invitation?” Beanie asks.
“Yesterday.”
“Let’s hope ours got lost in the mail,” Beanie says to me.
“You guys are really weird when it comes to girls,” Jocko says.
I don’t think that’s true. To be “weird when it comes to girls,” you have to think about them a lot, and that’s not something I do.
“You Gotta Love This Kid”
After school, I shoot hoops with Jocko, so I don’t get home until about five. My father isn’t around, and I’m surprised to see Crash and my grandfather sitting side by side on the steps of our large back porch. Crash is brandishing a huge Nerf gun, which looks like one of those old Gatling machine guns. He’s aiming it at the bird feeders, which are hanging on cast-iron poles at opposite ends of our koi pond. The gun holds about twelve Nerf bullets, which, contrary to the manufacturer’s claim, can put a dent in your cheek. It’s a quiet, sunny afternoon, the little birdies chirping and the koi pond’s artificial waterfall babbling, so I’m wondering what poor creature Crash plans to annihilate, and how he enlisted my grandfather in this attack.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Crash turns and angrily whispers, “Shhh, you’ll scare it away.” It’s obvious he’s been crying, because his cheeks are stained with dried tears.
I lower my voice. “It?”
“The hawk,” Crash says.
My grandfather tells me to go inside, where he’ll explain. “You okay by yourself?” he says to Crash, and Crash nods. “If that bum shows up, give ’im both barrels, you hear?”
It takes me a while to get my grandfather into the kitchen, where we sit on bar stools at a tall round granite table facing a window that looks out onto the backyard.
“What happened, Grandpa?”
Nowadays, it’s not always easy to get a straight answer from my grandfather, but after I help him find the right words, events come into focus. As it turns out, when Crash came home, he sat outside with my grandfather, doing his homework. As moody as Crash is, he has a few places he finds peaceful, like the porch. He loves birds, so he’s in charge of filling the bird feeders, and he keeps track of species that stop by. He’s even researched the kinds of seeds that attract different birds.
But as he was sitting there today, a large hawk swooped down, grasped a robin in its claws, then soared away. It’s probably the hawk we’ve seen hanging around on lower branches the last few weeks. I thought its presence was odd, though cool, because I had never seen one up close.
“How did you know about this?” I ask my grandfather.
“Your father called, and . . .” He’s trying to grab hold of Crash’s name among the jumble of choices whanging around in his head.
“Crash, Grandpa.”
“Yeah, Crash said you’re all a bunch of losers and he just wanted me here.”
I almost laugh, imagining my father’s response to that.
“If Crash doesn’t want the hawk to attack the birds, why did he tell me not to scare it away?”
“Revenge,” my grandfather says.
“So where’s Dad?”
“He went grocery shopping. Some other guy’s on his way.” And he begins searching for a name again. “Dodo or Bilbo, something like that.”
“Aldo?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Sounds like a dog, doesn’t it?”
“Why’s he coming?”
“Don’t know,” my grandfather says.
After I get him a glass of water, we return to the back porch, sitting on opposite sides of Crash.
“Sorry,” I say. “It must have been pretty traumatic.”
He looks straight ahead. “Why would you care? You think hawks are cool.”
“Not this one, Crash. He’s a bad apple.”
He looks up at me. “You mean that?”
“Yeah, he’s one nasty hawk.”
“You think this gun will scare him away?”
“If it doesn’t, we’ll get a bigger gun, right, Grandpa?”
“You bet. One of those flamethrowers will do the trick.”
“But wouldn’t it fry the bird feeders?” Crash says.
“Then we’ll have to buy them special suits. What are they, Benny?” he asks.
“Asbestos suits, Grandpa?”
“Yeah, those.”
This makes Crash smile.
“Why’s Aldo coming over, Crash?” I ask.
“When I got upset, I called Irene, and Aldo said the same thing happened to him once, so he knows what to do.”
“Hmmm,” I say.
“Will you do me a favor?” Crash asks.
“Sure.”
“Hold the gun while I go inside and pee.”
“No problem,” I say, taking the weapon from him.
“You’ll pay attention, right? You won’t start talking to Grandpa and space out, will you?’
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re a blabbermouth.”
Grandpa lets out a loud laugh, saying, “You gotta love this kid.”
Aldo Audubon
When my father comes home, I’m surprised my mother’s with him.
“Crash called you, too?”
“No, I ran into your father at the grocery store.”
“Very romantic,” I say, and she smirks at me. Irene, my grandfather, and I are sitting at the granite table, drinking Cokes. Aldo’s outside with Crash, moving the bird feeders around. He’s being very scientific, spreading the branches of our small trees, gesturing to Crash, who’s holding a bird feeder in each hand.
“What’s the Missing Link doing here?” my father asks.
“That’s not funny,” Irene says.
“Really,” my mother adds.
My grandfather laughs and says, “He’s a real kook, heh? But if Crap likes him, he’s okay with me. But what’s with the tight black pants? And the kid’s got no behind.”
My mother says, “It’s Crash, Kieran.” (Kieran is my grandfather’s name.)
“That’s what I said.”
My father places a bag of groceries on the kitchen counter and says to my mother, “I’ll explain later.”
Irene comes quickly to Aldo’s
defense. “I know you think Aldo eats raw meat and beheads people, but he knows a lot about animals and flowers.”
“Is he gay?” my grandfather asks.
“Kieran,” my mother says, and I add, “Very uncool, Grandpa.”
Meanwhile Aldo and Crash come in for a glass of water, and my mother says that won’t do, so she tells me to grab some Powerades from a refrigerator we keep in the garage.
“Not necessary, Mrs. Alvarez,” Aldo says, but she insists. Then she hugs Crash. “I’m really sorry, Buddy. You want some popcorn?”
The trouble with “positive” people is they think everything has a simple solution. Right now, Crash wants to suffer. He wants to cry, then track down that hawk and Nerf-dart it to death.
“Did you hear me, Benny?” she asks, and so I leave.
When I return, Aldo is sitting in my seat next to my grandfather, while my sister edges her chair next to his and starts rubbing his forearm. My father takes this in but doesn’t seem upset.
“So what’s the verdict, Aldo?” he says.
“If we move the bird feeders closer to the trees,” Crash jumps in, “Aldo says the birds will be able to hide from the hawk or escape easier.”
“But then the squirrels will eat their food,” I say.
Aldo nods. “But you can still keep the feeders away from the squirrels but close enough to give the birds protection. We’re going to fiddle with them and see what happens.”
“So a few more birds may have to bite the dust?”
“Benny,” my mother says.
“I’m just saying, that’s the only way we’ll know.”
Grandpa’s feeling a little upstaged, so he offers his two cents. “Not if Crap and me are on patrol, and there’s always the flamethrowers.”
Aldo’s looking like he just entered an alternate universe. He mouths silently to Irene, “Crap?” and then he speaks in a normal voice to my grandfather, “Flamethrowers?”
The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez Page 4
