by Jack Gantos
“Pretty good manual dexterity,” Mr. Ploof remarked, nodding as he jotted down some figures on a pad.
“I write a lot,” I said, stretching the truth. “Keeps the fingers limber. Besides, our dog can do this stuff.”
“Don’t go getting a swelled noggin,” he warned, as his monstrous head wobbled dangerously on his skinny neck. “The tests get harder.”
“Just bring it on,” I said, feeling supremely confident that I was soon going to have my ticket out of this loser school.
I did a test where I read a page of mixed-up information, then summarized it in the most logical order. That took only an ounce of common sense. Then I had a long list of sentences where I filled in the blanks about my feelings. That took me extra time to sort through because I always felt two or three ways about any one thing that happened to me.
After that test I was a bit run down and asked if I could take a break, stretch my legs, and eat a snack. I had a family-size Zero bar stashed in my locker.
“No,” he replied. I had begun to figure out that he was one of those people who stressed every word with a gesture. He said no while at the same time slowly rotating his head back and forth. A double no. Even if you didn’t understand English, you would get the universal sign language for no.
“You have to do this all in a row,” he explained. “Plus, you can’t be left alone. How can I tell you won’t cheat?” To illustrate that he had asked a question his hands darted out from his sides like a puzzled Egyptian hieroglyphic.
“How can I cheat?” I asked. “The questions are a secret. Besides, you can come with me.”
“Pull yourself together,” he said, and narrowed his eyes. “Part of this test is endurance.” He jutted out his chin, but his head began to tilt forward so he pulled it back. Then he removed the standard IQ test from its sealed envelope and placed it face-down in front of me. “Now I want you to concentrate,” he instructed, and tapped a finger against his temple. “Of everything you’ve done today, this is the most important. The IQ results will go on your permanent record and will be with you for the rest of your life.”
It was as if he was reading me my Miranda rights—you have the right to remain silent, the right to call an attorney, the right to …
He removed a stopwatch from his pocket. “On your mark. Get set.” He pressed the top button. “Go!” he shouted, and pointed toward an imaginary finish line.
I was so revved up I put too much pressure on my pencil and as I wrote down the first answer my point snapped. I desperately looked up at Mr. Ploof. “Can I start over?” I asked.
He frowned down at me. “No talking. Keep going!” he instructed.
I didn’t have a pencil sharpener so I began to gnaw at the wood around the lead, spitting out the pulp, until I exposed the blunt end. I felt even more like a white laboratory rat, but I pulled myself together and raced through the test. For something so important it didn’t seem too difficult or take very long even though I got off to a rough start. I found it more challenging when Mom asked me to sort the laundry into lights and darks and I had to decide where to put clothes that were mauve or salmon or chartreuse. But I never thought that sorting the laundry was an indication of my future potential.
When I lowered my pencil Mr. Ploof pressed another button on the stopwatch and wrote the time down on his pad.
“You can go now, but return next week for the results,” he said.
“Thanks,” I replied, picking at a few splinters in my lips. I dashed out the door and down the hall. I was starving, so I got my Zero bar from my locker and went into the boys’ toilet. There were a couple of scrawny guys in there smoking cigarettes and taking turns punching each other so hard in the chest that twin plumes of dragon smoke rolled out their noses. I swallowed my Zero bar too quickly and it got stuck in my throat.
A week later I was back in Mr. Ploof’s office.
“Sit down,” he said, and pointed to a ruggedly carved chair that was probably made by a former ax murderer. Then he patted the seat of his own matching chair so I wouldn’t misunderstand him. “Take a load off.”
“I’d rather stand,” I said. I was pretty nervous so I jumped to the point. “What about the test results? Can I go to another school?”
He sat down and sighed. “Sorry, kid,” he said, trying to sound cheerful as he opened my file. “You’re just normal. Average.”
“That can’t be,” I protested. “Just earlier this year I was better than average. In fact, I was superior.”
He rolled his eyes. “You may have peaked early,” he suggested. “It happens.” He spun my file around so I could read it for myself. “You didn’t show us any reason to send you up to the next level.”
I sat down. Typed out on a sheet of paper were my test results.
PHYSICAL DEXTERITY—AVERAGE
LOGIC SKILLS—AVERAGE
EMOTIONAL MATURITY—AVERAGE
IQ—LOW TO AVERAGE—85
“I don’t have a low IQ,” I said with my voice rising. “No way I’m this—”
He cut me off. “Be grateful it’s still in the average zone,” he stressed. “Believe me, I’ve seen a lot worse. If anything, this score means you should make something really spectacular in wood shop. Just so you know, before you pitch a fit and insult me, my IQ is also eighty-five.” He gave himself a little congratulatory pat on the back.
I was horrified. He was the pinnacle of what I might become. This couldn’t be true. It was a nightmare. I stood up and shuffled toward the door. I felt as though I had just received the worst possible sentence: Simpleton for Life Without Parole.
“Don’t take it so hard,” he advised, and waved at the air in front of his face. “It’s not like we’re going to send you to Siberia. Just join the crowd. Average guys like you and me are the majority. We’re the men that make the world go around. We work in the trenches, digging ditches, unclogging toilets, mowing lawns—you know, the jobs that nobody wants to do but that have to be done. Who do rich people call when they need help? Guys like you and me, that’s who.”
“But I want to be a writer,” I said quietly.
“Hey, a low IQ doesn’t stop you from writing. You can do phone messages. Grocery lists. Sweetheart tattoos. Graffiti. Heck, you can pass notes back and forth in class, can’t you?”
“But I want to write books,” I explained.
He scratched his hairless head. “That,” he replied, “could prove to be frustrating. Why defeat yourself by trying to become something you can’t?”
“But I can try,” I said. “Whatever happened to the idea that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?”
“I guess nobody told you,” he said matter-of-factly. “That little ditty is for losers, for old dreamers like me,” and he pointed to his huge cranium, “who beat their head against the wall one too many times. Look, do yourself a favor. Pick something you can handle.”
“Like a broom?”
“Now you’re thinking,” he said with fresh enthusiasm. “Now you’re putting those brain cells to work.”
“Thanks,” I said in a whisper, and backed out of his office. I stumbled down to the boys’ toilet and splashed water on my face. I wished those guys were in there punching each other. I would have asked them to put me out of my misery like a horse with a broken leg.
Three
When I got off the school bus I went straight to the library. I always had a few extra minutes before wood shop started and figured the library was the most logical location for my muse to take some quiet time and visit me.
But the library was such a non-creative place it made sense that my muse never showed up. First, the few books we had were tethered on loops of braided wire to screw hooks on the shelf, just like telephone books wired to U-bolts in telephone booths. And second, we didn’t have a librarian. We had a volunteer dad. He was a retired bank security guard who had been shot in the knee during an armed robbery. He ambled around with one leg pulling up the rear as if he were dragging a ball an
d chain. I guessed wiring the books to the shelves was his way of making sure they weren’t stolen, but the result was more of a prison for books.
The first time I went to the library I asked him how I checked one out.
“This isn’t a lending library,” he replied. “It’s a sit and read library.” He pointed to one of the long locker-room-type benches running along all the shelves.
“But I can’t sit here and read all day,” I said.
“Then don’t read so much,” he suggested. “Stay busy doing other things. Besides, it’s unhealthy for a young man to be cooped up in a library all day.”
I changed the subject. “Do you have any books on writing?” I asked. “Such as how-to books on novels or stories? How to get in touch with your muse?”
“Kid,” he said wearily, “the best how-to advice I can give you is if you want to do something, do it. Don’t sit around reading about it. You want to write? Then go write. Now, why don’t you take a hike. Don’t you see I’m busy?”
He turned away from me and began to drill a hole through the top corner of a book so he could fit a wire through and secure it to a shelf.
“Is that a new book?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He just turned up the drill speed. Bits of paper spiraled out of the hole. I could make out a few letters where he’d drilled through a word. I hoped it wasn’t a how-to book on something like first-aid. Instead of giving someone the Heimlich, you’d give them a hernia. When I didn’t leave right away he looked at me and jerked his head toward the door. I wasn’t that dumb. I turned and left.
This time, when I entered the library, the volunteer dad was tightening nuts on the underside of the shelves, securing his screw hooks, and examining the wire cables to make sure they were undamaged.
He turned toward me and eyed me up and down. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “Come here.”
“Did you get any new books on how to write novels?” I asked.
“No,” he growled. Then quickly he grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me up against a book shelf. “Stand with your arms overhead and your feet apart,” he ordered as he swooped around me.
“What’s this all about?” I asked.
“I’m going to search you,” he explained. “Someone’s been coming in here with a wrench and wire cutters and stealing my books.” He patted me down from the tips of my fingers to my toes. Then he unzipped my backpack and shook everything out onto a table. “Where’re you hiding them?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied.
“The books!” he snapped. “The books you stole.”
“I don’t steal books,” I said. “I borrow them.”
“That’s what they all say,” he snarled, clearly disappointed that I wasn’t the thief. “Don’t you have a class to go to?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then get,” he ordered.
As I left the library I looked up at the ceiling one last time just in case my muse was getting ready to visit. Nothing was up there but a big rusty stain.
On Monday and Tuesday we had English, math, science, and history, as did any other normal school. But on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we did nothing but shop. We didn’t have gym because the principal figured exercise was a waste of time for guys who were just going to grow up, do manual labor, maybe play a little softball, and retire to drink beer. Because I had gone to school in Barbados for most of seventh grade, I had missed all the metal-shop instruction and was now into the final weeks of wood shop before school ended.
After I fled the library I went down to the shop and, along with fifty other guys, stood in front of my assigned piece of heavy equipment.
“Today, men, we’re going to work at making baseball bats,” announced Mr. Gilette, the wood-shop instructor. He wore tan bib overalls and a hardware-store paint cap. “The bat is one of man’s earliest and most essential tools, which makes it the perfect assignment for learning to operate a wood lathe.”
Great, I thought, then we can beat each other’s brains out during recess. Those who survive can then evolve and make spears. The next round of survivors can make bows and arrows. The winner and sole survivor can build a mahogany trophy case with the heads of all his victims on display as an example of his superior evolution.
“Each one of you should have a four-inch by four-inch by four-foot piece of pine already inserted in your lathe.”
We did.
“Now, to quote Michelangelo, the secret to carving a really good bat is visualizing the finished object within the raw materials.”
I raised my hand.
“Yes,” said Mr. Gilette.
“I don’t think Michelangelo sculpted baseball bats,” I ventured.
“What’s your name, young man?” he asked.
“Jack Henry,” I replied.
He made a note in his green roll book. “Well, Mr. Henry,” he said, and marched forward to tower over me. “Michelangelo, among other things, invented baseball bats.”
“I was always under the impression it was Fred Flint-stone,” I said, wondering what other smart-ass things I could say in order to get kicked out of shop.
“No. It was definitely Michelangelo,” he insisted.
“Are you sure David and Goliath weren’t the first pitcher-batter combo?” I asked, still hoping to get the boot.
A few guys began to laugh.
“Michelangelo,” Mr. Gilette persisted, then snapped his fingers overhead to cut off the laughter. “Now back to what I was saying.” He spoke as if he were pounding a sixteen-penny nail through my skull. “Imagine, if you will, that Babe Ruth has come to you with the request to make him a bat for the seventh game of the World Series. A perfect bat. A homerun-hitting monster bat. Now, let that be your inspiration as we begin to visualize. First, put on your protective goggles.”
We did. I visualized us all as annoying houseflies.
“Next, start your lathes by flipping up the toggle switch on the lower right.”
We did and the sound of the fifty electric motors picking up speed was like a jet screaming toward takeoff.
“Now,” he hollered above the roar. “Take your wood chisel and begin to press the sharp edge against the handle end of the bat, and don’t be afraid to bear down on the wood and let the chips fall where they may.”
I pressed the chisel against the rotating four-by-four. A corner of the blade dug into the wood and in an instant the chisel was whipped out of my hand and sent hurtling end-over-end toward the front of the shop, where it hit the brick wall and clattered onto the floor next to Mr. Gilette’s steel-toed work boot.
“Cut! Cut!” Mr. Gilette shouted, but most everyone was bearing down on their bats. Long ribbons of yellow pine curled up over their heads as they dreamed of the perfect club for “the Babe.” Mr. Gilette tripped a master circuit breaker and killed all the power. The lathes slowly wound down.
“What are you, Henry?” Mr. Gilette shouted directly into my face. “Brain dead? Or just limp-wristed?”
“I slipped,” I explained.
“Have you tested high enough to be in shop?” he asked.
“I’m warm-blooded,” I replied. It was beginning to dawn on me that if I was a big enough jerk they might do me a favor and suspend me indefinitely. A lot of writers got their start by being thrown out of school.
He picked up the chisel, then turned and slapped it handle first into my open hand. “If this thing had hit me just right, mister, I’d be dead and you’d be up on manslaughter charges.”
“And I’d be convicted and sent right back to this school,” I retorted.
He hastily removed a pad of pink slips from his nail apron. He wrote down: Jack Henry. One hour extra shop for mouthing off. He kept a copy for the principal and folded the other in half and shoved it down into my shirt pocket. “See you after school, motor-mouth,” he said.
No you won’t, I thought as I returned to my lathe.
“Let us once again imag
ine the unformed object within the wood,” announced Mr. Gilette and switched the circuit breaker back on. The lights dimmed and flickered as if someone were being put to death in the electric chair.
By the time I finished, my bat looked more like a walking stick for a blind man. Babe Ruth could only have used it to tap his way around the bases.
At lunchtime I marched over to the cafeteria to get something to eat. Creamed chicken gizzards was the main course of the day. It had been the main course on Wednesdays since I got to the place. The cafeteria boss only allowed us plastic spoons to eat with. I guess she figured plastic knives and forks were too dangerous for us criminals in training. The slippery gizzards were pretty hard to manage with just a spoon. As I walked down a row of steel tables someone put pressure on a gizzard and it shot off the tray and onto the waxed concrete floor, where it skidded away like an escapee slug. I dodged a few more and bought a carton of milk from a tough-looking kitchen lady with a mustache. I figured she was some Mafia guy hiding in the Witness Protection Program.
I took the milk and went out to the ex-prison yard to pace back and forth and figure out a way to blow off detention. I needed an excuse to be someplace else. I thought of going to visit Mr. Ploof for more career counseling, but that was too depressing. I couldn’t volunteer at the library because the library dad thought I was a book thief. Then I saw the sign on one of the guard towers. LATIN CLUB MEETING AFTER SCHOOL. ALL INVITED. I decided to check them out.
At the end of shop I raised my hand and asked Mr. Gilette if I could go to the bathroom.
“The old bathroom trick before detention,” he said. “Do you think I’m going to fall for that?”
“Really,” I said. “I have to go.”
“I’ll give you a two-minute head start,” he said with a knowing smile. “Then when I find you, which I will, I’m going to teach you how to make toothpicks.”
I used my two minutes to dash across the prison grounds and over to the Latin Club tower. It will be nice to hang around with some smart kids for a change, I thought, as I pounded on the metal door.
