The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez

by Peter Johnson

  But Crash has changed his mind about the flamethrowers. “No, Grandpa. Aldo explained it’s not the hawk’s fault. They have to live too, and without birds, they’ll die.”

  “Really?” my grandfather says, looking impressed.

  “But Aldo says the hawk will come back, so we can at least try to protect the little birds.”

  “So no flamethrowers or automatic weapons?” my grandfather says. “How about a bazooka?”

  “No,” Crash says.

  “Too bad—it would’ve been fun.”

  My father and Aldo laugh loudly at this comment, then look surprised and uncomfortable by their sudden camaraderie, and my father stuns everyone, except Irene, by inviting Aldo to dinner.

  “Me too?” Grandpa says.

  “Of course, Dad.”

  Aldo and Crash leave to finish their bird feeder relocation job, and the rest of us set the table, while my father thaws out hamburger for tacos. My grandfather stays put, and I see him watching Crash and Aldo. At one point, he grabs my arm and says, “You think he’s a kook?”

  “What?”

  “The guy with the tight pants.”

  “No, Grandpa, he’s not a kook.”

  “Then what is he?” Grandpa asks.

  “He’s a good guy, just a little different.”

  I look up and notice my father’s been listening. He’s rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger, like he’s wondering how he would’ve answered Grandpa’s question.

  Later, for the heck of it, I look up “kook”: “blockhead, bonehead, dork, imbecile, jerk, nitwit, out to lunch.” The jerks at Aldo’s school probably call him a dork, or think he’s out to lunch, but I’m beginning to think he’s what you’d call an original, since I never met anyone quite like him.

  Still, there’s that Tweety Bird tattoo.

  A Dog Named Hobo

  Jocko, Beanie, and I get to school early the next morning, so we rack our bikes and sit on the front lawn. It’s cool but sunny. We watch kids shuffling toward us, envying the eighth graders, who get to leave next year for what Beanie calls the “real world,” high school. We’re about to grab our backpacks when I spy Claudine walking toward the entrance with her old tan Labrador retriever, Hobo. Everyone knows about the dog, how he’s the oldest dog in the universe and has some weird cancer but just won’t die. He walks Claudine to school every morning, then shows up right on time for dismissal.

  “You have to admit that’s cool,” Jocko says.

  “What?” Beanie asks.

  “The way that dog waits for her every day.”

  “I thought the town had leash laws,” I say.

  “What, do you want to throw a half-blind dog with cancer in the pound?”

  “I’m just saying that if it were Spot, they wouldn’t let me do it.”

  “And they’d be right,” Jocko says, “because that dog smells like a garbage dump.”

  “I just think Claudine gets treated differently because her mother’s a teacher.” She’s actually an aide.

  “I agree,” Jocko says, “so why don’t we go over and beat old Hobo with some sharp sticks.”

  Beanie laughs.

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “Dude, you’re just very harsh on that girl.”

  I’m wondering why everyone keeps saying that.

  “Speaking of Claudine, who happens to be a girl,” Beanie says, “has everyone gotten their behest?”

  It takes me and Jocko about two minutes to figure out he’s talking about the invitation to Becky Walters’s party.

  “Yeah,” I say, “yesterday. But no reason to worry about presents. Mine said to donate money to the breast cancer crusade.”

  “Breast cancer?” Jocko says. “How did I miss that? You think her mother has it?”

  I hadn’t really thought about that. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going?” Beanie asks me.

  Last night, after Aldo left, I really sweated that one. In a way, it’s not something I want to miss, because I’ve never been to a party with a deejay. So many unknowns, it’s almost interesting, but I’m having trouble getting past the idea of dancing. Irene says the girls will dance with or without us, and she’ll be happy to teach me a few steps. What no one knows is that I dance by myself sometimes, doing what comes naturally, though the thought of dancing publicly makes me want to puke.

  “I asked if you’re going,” Beanie repeats.

  “Yeah,” I say, “but only if we show up together. I don’t want to be there early with a bunch of girls or guys I don’t even like.”

  “I agree,” Jocko says. Then he starts obsessing on a lot of little details, like how we should dress and if we should wear something pink because of the breast cancer thing.

  It’s amazing how he’ll freak over every dumb detail of everything we do but spaces out on the big stuff, like the fact that girls will be at the party. But then, as I said, he’ll talk to a girl as easily as he’ll talk to a guy.

  Once we agree we’re going, we head toward the entrance. Hobo’s lying at Claudine’s feet while she talks to a friend. “Let’s wait a second,” I say.

  Beanie agrees, but Jocko ignores us, moving toward the front doors. He’s almost there when he takes a detour to pet Hobo, who’s resting on his side. Jocko rubs his belly and Hobo’s left leg starts twitching. Now here’s the weird part: while he’s rubbing Hobo, he’s talking to Claudine like they’re old friends.

  “What’s that about?” I say.

  “You know Jocko,” Beanie says.

  As Jocko continues to talk, my feet lead me involuntarily toward Claudine, and before I know it, I’m next to her, then on one knee petting Hobo. I look behind to see if Irene is there, zapping me with a do-gooder spell.

  “Nice dog,” I say, waiting for Jocko to add, “Yeah, why don’t we call a vet to put him down?” but he gives me a pass.

  Claudine’s towering over me, squinting, probably wondering if this is some kind of trick. She doesn’t thank me, just helps Hobo to his feet and says, “Home, Hobo.” The dog licks her face, then slowly heads off. With every step to the left or right, he looks like he’s going to lose his balance. Finally, he stumbles into a right turn and disappears from sight, and that’s when Claudine leaves, ignoring us, like we never existed.

  “You’re welcome, Claudine,” I say behind her back.

  “Thanking you probably isn’t on her mind, Benny,” Jocko says. “If I were her, I’d be worried every day that Hobo might not show up at dismissal, which would mean he died.”

  “How does she know he’ll make it home?” Beanie asks.

  “She only lives a few houses down the street,” I say.

  Jocko smiles. “How do you know that?”

  “I must’ve driven by with my dad one day and saw her out front. What does it matter?”

  “I guess it doesn’t,” Jocko says, grinning stupidly at me.

  Night Crawler

  In class, things aren’t going too well with Sara, and right now I’d rather be in my after-school drawing class sketching cartoons.

  Ms. D tries to help, telling everyone to let our minds “roam” on whatever images come to mind. “Free-associate,” she says.

  When we talk individually, Sara asks me to describe how a night crawler is different from a regular worm, so I repeat how in late spring my grandfather and I patrol his backyard with flashlights, trying to catch worms peeking out from their holes before they see the light and recoil.

  “What do you do with them?”

  “We use them for bait.”

  “You mean you stick a hook into them?”

  I wonder how someone so smart can ask such a dumb question, but I say, “Yeah, they’re usually very juicy.”

  She cringes, and I’m guessing that’s what Caulfield means by an image being powerful. So I decide to tone things down or we’ll end up writing about ballet shoes instead of night crawlers.

  “Did you write a draft of the poem last night?” I ask.
<
br />   “I focused more on jotting down nighttime images.”

  “Really?” I say, thinking this won’t be too helpful. “Like what?”

  “Like the sound of a railroad car, wet grass, a streetlight, a baby crying.” And she rattles off about five more. “What about you?” she asks.

  “I actually wrote the whole poem last night.”

  She seems surprised and asks me to read it.

  “‘My grandpa and me go fishing, but first we get night crawlers, creepy little creatures with big noses. They look like fingers someone cut off as they crawl around. But we grab them and I don’t mind getting all wet and dirty.’”

  She’s looking at my sheet of paper, pursing her lips like she just sucked on a lemon. “It kind of reads like sentences,” she says, way too loudly, and I can feel Claudine eavesdropping. “Also,” she adds, “we can’t have the name of the object in the poem. People are supposed to guess it.” She’s right about that.

  “But it’s got poetry,” I say, “the way I talk about them having noses and compare them to fingers.”

  Maybe I’m crazy, but I’m sure she glances at Claudine before saying, “That’s good, but we’re going to have line breaks, right, and maybe rhyme?”

  In fact, I had no intention of having line breaks. “Yeah, sure,” I say.

  “I mean,” she adds, “I thought we could make the poem sound like the slurping noise night crawlers make when they go in and out of their holes.”

  Slurping noise?

  “We’ll get it right,” I say, “but maybe we should write something we can take home and fiddle with.”

  So we write separately for a while, and I give her this:

  My grandpa and me

  go fishing but first

  we capture them,

  creepy little creatures with big noses.

  They look like fingers someone cut off

  as they crawl around. But we grab them

  and I don’t mind getting all wet and dirty.

  Why mess with perfection? So all I do is get rid of the “night crawlers” and change “get” to “capture.” Who cares where I break the lines?

  Right before class ends, she slides a sheet over to me:

  The last automobile of the night passes,

  And I fall on a blanket of grass.

  My left hand catches them coupling.

  Rooted to the ground yet aspiring upward.

  Anonymous.

  I’m not too sure what I think of this, but at least it doesn’t rhyme. “Really terrific, Sara,” I say.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, it almost reads like a finished poem,” and I’m not lying about that, though I can’t make sense of that “Anonymous.”

  Ms. D interrupts us by saying, “Time’s up. Why don’t you work on each other’s drafts tonight? Then on Friday, you can meet in pairs again, and on Monday we’ll read them.”

  In the hall, I ask Beanie how he made out. He was paired with Bethany Briggs. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Just okay?”

  “I don’t think either one of us cares much.”

  “What are you writing on?”

  Suddenly, Claudine’s busybody voice invades my space. “You can’t ask him that.”

  Beanie doesn’t want to agree but knows she’s right. “It is a kind of a contest, dude.”

  Claudine smiles, and before walking away, shakes her finger at me. “And don’t think you’re going to bully Sara into writing a prose poem.”

  Ah, so maybe Sara isn’t a neutral. Maybe she’s been turned to the Dark Side.

  Samuel Morse

  It’s hard to say when Claudine and I became enemies, but obviously our fates are linked, because she’s been in my classes since first grade. She’s taller than everyone, and unlike the rest of us, who are always slouching, thinking someone’s making fun of us, she has the posture of a figure skater or gymnast. Also, she has so much confidence when she talks that she’s very intimidating. You would think most kids would hate her, but girls buzz around her like she’s the queen bee, and she usually ends up president of the class. She never gets the boy vote, but there are enough guys who are either scared of her or so used to her winning, they just don’t care.

  Why don’t the boys like her? Probably because she’s always waiting for us to say something dumb, so she can pounce on us, proving her point at our expense. I imagine her staying up all night, eyes as big as Ping-Pong balls, anticipating some bonehead guy’s response to the day’s lesson, so she can get in his face. I should admire what Ms. D calls Claudine’s “determination,” but the Book has taught me there are other words for “determination,” like “pushy, obnoxious, egotistical, bullheaded, intolerant, tyrannical”—well, you get the picture.

  Claudine and I wouldn’t battle so much if I zoned her out the way most guys do, but one of my traits is that I don’t like being bullied or seeing others bullied. Another one of my traits is that I can argue you to death. You want to argue that the cafeteria pizza is great, I can counter with a hundred reasons why it isn’t, even if it’s my favorite meal. This so-called negative characteristic drives my mother nuts, but it’s like I can’t stop myself. I always see the other side of an argument. My mother thinks I’m going to be a lawyer. My father says I’m going to be a huge pain in the neck, though that’s not the word he uses, and you don’t need a thesaurus to guess it.

  So, in a way, Claudine and I had no choice but to be enemies from day one, and school was our battlefield. I had my breakthrough in fifth grade. The teacher, Ms. Bright, assigned us a two-paragraph report on Samuel Morse. I already knew he had invented the telegraph, but I discovered he’d been a pretty good painter, too, so I wrote about that, thinking it would be more interesting. When my time came, I proudly recited my report, and right as I finished, Claudine’s hand shot up. She’s a sly one. Teachers would hate her if she said, “Benny’s report is dumb because he missed Samuel Morse’s most important contribution,” or if she was smirking and sighing and shaking her head disgustedly as I spoke. But not Claudine. Even then, she had perfected this fake look of interest, a whole routine where she compliments you first before lowering the boom.

  That day she said, “Benny makes many good points, but a man’s real accomplishment is judged by how many lives he has changed, and certainly the telegraph and Morse code are more important than mediocre paintings.” It was the way she emphasized “certainly” and “mediocre” that sent me over the edge.

  “Why wouldn’t painting be important?” I asked, surprising myself.

  Fake concern again. “It’s not unimportant. It’s just not as important as the telegraph.”

  “So you’re saying if I give a hand to some old guy who’s fallen down and no one sees me, that’s not as important as helping a hundred people on national TV?”

  She was a bit baffled by that, and I was waiting for the teacher to interrupt, but Ms. Bright seemed to be enjoying the conflict. After a long pause, Claudine said, “I would be glad you helped someone, but helping a hundred people is better.”

  “What if I was helping all those people so I’d be famous? What if I hated them all? Isn’t the feeling behind something important? Maybe Morse hated creating the telegraph. Maybe he invented it to make money. Maybe he was laughing his head off as he watched people tapping away like a bunch of idiots.”

  Silence again. Then Claudine said, “Well, if Samuel Morse was such a great painter, why didn’t anyone else mention it in their reports?”

  I wanted to say, “Because everyone got their two paragraphs done, then didn’t read the rest of the entry in the encyclopedia,” but it was clear the class was liking this confrontation, so I didn’t want to push them toward Claudine’s side.

  Rather than play her game, I pulled out a sheet of other facts on Morse’s painting that I didn’t have space to include. “Did you know,” I said, “that the famous painter Washington Allston liked Morse’s paintings so much, he took him to England, where Morse studied and was
so good he was admitted to the Royal Academy?” And then I read from my notes. “‘And there Morse studied the paintings of Michelangelo and created his masterpiece Dying Hercules.’” To be honest, I had never seen the painting and didn’t really know how significant it was to be admitted to the Royal Academy, but all those facts seemed to stun Claudine, as if she had lunged forward with her sword and I had disarmed her. But she recovered enough to save face, saying, “Honestly, Benny, you didn’t give those facts in your report. Now I may have to reconsider. The telegraph was Morse’s most important contribution, but maybe his paintings were equally as important.”

  Too late, Claudine, I thought, and I was about to go for the jugular when Ms. Bright came to her rescue, saying, “It’s clear we’ve learned two things today: First, great people are often multitalented; second, two different views on those people can be equally correct.” Had she gone over to the Dark Side too?

  What’s important is that after that day, I became a legend with the boys. I had stood up for every guy who had been turned into a donkey by Claudine. But I had also alienated her until death do us part. The difference was that now she had to be on top of her game, because instead of feeling sick to my stomach every time I spoke in class, I thought, Bring it on, girl.

  Now all I have to do is stop blushing when she talks to me.

  Ostriches and Pigeons

  Thursday afternoons I go to my grandfather’s house and we work on language. It’s something he looks forward to. That and watching sports on TV. Crash used to come, until he freaked out and I found him in the kitchen crying. I was doing opposites with my grandfather, where I say a word, show him its picture, then ask him to say the opposite. It’s something any first grader can do, but after the stroke it would’ve been easier for my grandfather to slip on a pair of ballet shoes and walk on a tightrope across the gorge at Niagara Falls with a four-hundred-pound gorilla on his back.