Adam Canfield of the Slash

by Michael Winerip

  The streets in Adam’s neighborhood dead-ended into a walkway that ran along the Tremble for miles. Adam turned the corner and headed upriver. It was quiet, no joggers or bikers.

  Adam knew that the river was many rivers. Each season it changed. In summer the river was busy and noisy, thick with pleasure boats and tourists. There were cabin cruisers and fifty-foot sailboats, many heading to the ocean. There were little Butterflies, Sunfish, and putt-putts out for a few hours of sailing or fishing. They so crowded the river that Adam imagined he could make it from one bank to the other by stepping from boat to boat.

  Not far from Adam’s house, by a big bend in the river, was a town beach. It was really just a set of docks that had been lashed together and then anchored to steel posts. At one end of the docks was a diving board. Adam loved to jump in and let the current pull him to the far end of the docks, where he’d swim for the ladder, then do it all over again. Even in mid-August, the water was cool, and some days last summer Adam and Jennifer had flopped on the docks in the hot afternoon sun, chatting and snoozing until their skin was beaded with sweat. Then they’d jump up and race to be first off the diving board.

  In spring, Adam rode his bike downriver and watched the crew teams from the state campus at Tremble race.

  Twice in his lifetime, the winter had been cold enough for the river to freeze. He had learned to skate his third-grade winter, going out on the river with his mother night after night. After they grew weak and wobbly, he and Mom laid on their backs in the dark stillness, listening to the ice creak and searching the winter sky for shooting stars.

  The river was frigid and gray in late fall, but Adam loved how quiet and powerful it felt with the tourists gone. He’d see a line of coal barges or hear the foghorn of a tug moving upriver. Fall was when Adam and Danny used to come for a skip.

  Adam reached the boathouse at Long Bluff. It was a famous landmark, a big yellow wooden building jacked up high off the river to protect it from even a hundred-year flood. Sailboats tacking on the river used it as a bearing, and fishermen found their favorite spots by calculating the distance from the boathouse. It had large handsome flower boxes under the main-floor windows that the civic association members planted each spring with red geraniums and yellow marigolds. Families stored their kayaks, canoes, and small sailboats in the lower half of the building; upstairs was a large musty sitting room full of canvas chairs and wicker couches, a perfect place to watch a summer sunset.

  This time of year the boathouse was boarded up for winter.

  Adam followed the boardwalk that crossed over the bluff to the boathouse, then climbed down a ladder to the dock and river below.

  The Tremble was low, leaving a sliver of sandy bottom and plenty of rocks exposed at the bank’s edge. Adam hunted up several handfuls of flat rocks, made a pile, and began skipping them.

  He was good. To get the most skips out of a rock, he used plenty of wrist and angled his body low so his arm came whipping around parallel to the water. If he stood too erect and threw with a downward motion, the rock would make one big skip, then sink.

  When Adam was in the zone, he could skip a rock so many times, with each skip so close to the next, it was impossible to count them all. Danny had once said it looked like a motorboat skimming the water’s surface, and the phrase stuck.

  To repeatedly throw motorboats took skill, but also the right conditions — mainly flat water.

  Adam threw all his rocks, gathered more, threw all those, then did it again. It felt good to throw as hard as he could and burn off his anger and worries. He’d needed a big skip. Seeing a rock do a motorboat never failed to give him a sense of satisfaction.

  For a long time he skipped rocks, thinking of nothing, losing track of time. Then he noticed he was getting cold and that started his worries creeping back. He told himself if he could throw three straight motorboats, it would mean that the Miss Bloch story would turn out great and he wouldn’t have to worry about Marris.

  By then the wind had picked up, sending small, choppy swells in toward the bank. Repeatedly, his rock would catch a wave, pop high in the air, and sink after two or three skips. Adam never did get three motorboats in a row, and finally quit, walking home in the dark, chilled and full of worries.

  Phoebe heard about it from her mother, who signed at the mall.

  Jennifer’s dad told her about it; he signed at the train station on the way into the city.

  Danny signed in front of Pitkin’s Rexall, where a little table had been set up.

  The lady with the plywood cow signed by the cash register at O’Rourke Hardware.

  Betty Willard signed at the Pine Street AME Zion Church in the Willows.

  But it wasn’t until Saturday morning that Adam found out. Their doorbell rang, a rare occurrence. Adam ignored it. He knew it wouldn’t be for him. There weren’t many kids on his block, and his friends usually called or instant-messaged before biking over, or they just hollered from the street.

  Adam’s mom got the door, was out there a little while, then came back inside. “Adam,” she called, “come downstairs. I want you to hear this.”

  Adam took his sweet time, hitting each step harder than normal just to remind his mother that he was doing her a huge favor. On the front porch was a woman and her daughter. The girl was little, second or third grade. She had blond pigtails, was missing her two front teeth and holding a clipboard. What struck Adam most, though, was over her sweat-shirt she wore a basketball T-shirt, a Bill Russell Hall of Fame jersey — not an easy item to find in the Tri-River Region.

  “Go ahead, kitty,” said the mother. “Start again.”

  “A tewwible thing is happening,” said the little girl. “Bad people want to take away the little childwen’s basketball hoops. What are they, cwazy? Do they want us all to get hooked on dwugs? You should wead this.” She handed Adam a copy of Adam’s story from the Slash.

  Adam was practically glowing. “I’ve read it,” he said.

  “He wrote it,” said his mother.

  “Wrote it?” said the woman. “This is Adam Canfield of the Slash?!”

  Adam tried not to glow too much.

  “Kitten-witten,” said the woman. “This is the young man who wrote the story about the hoops.”

  The girl took a moment to absorb that. “Wow,” she said. “Can I have your autogwaph, Mr. Canfield?”

  “Several youth groups in the community are circulating petitions,” the woman explained. “We’re going to present them to the zoning board. I don’t know what those zoning people were thinking.”

  “Do they want us all to get hooked on dwugs?” said the little girl.

  “It’s OK, kitty,” said the mother. “Save it. These people understand.”

  “Are they twying to make the little childwen misweble?” said the girl.

  Adam’s mom signed and called down his dad, who also signed.

  “How many childwen have to die to make this cwaziness stop?” said the little girl.

  “Kitty, calm down,” said the mother. “You’re going to wear yourself out. This is just our fourth street.”

  As the mother led her down the block, Adam could hear the little girl chanting, “No justice, no peace, save the childwen. No justice, no peace, save the childwen.”

  Peter Friendly of Bolandvision 12 was at the downtown river pier, at Huck Finn’s California Sushi De-Lite, when he learned about the petition. In his loudest, most Friendly voice, he had just finished explaining to the hostess exactly who he was, which important people he knew, and what table by the window he preferred, when a man with paper and pen approached. Peter Friendly assumed it was a fan seeking an autograph and gave him his Friendly-est smile, but was surprised to learn that the fellow just wanted him to sign a basketball petition. The man explained that he coached a CYO team and said in all his years, he had never seen such a response to a petition.

  Peter Friendly didn’t bother calling this information in to his news director. From his ten-part groundbre
aking investigation of zoning scourges, he knew the Bolands were not interested in basketball zoning stories. And besides, his table by the river was ready.

  Sumner Boland never heard a word of the petition. He was an incredibly busy man, a national force, spending every waking hour cutting deals, hobnobbing with politicians, and protecting his cable monopoly in forty-eight television markets. His professional life was soaring upward at a dizzying pace. These days, stories in the Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser no longer referred to him as a “businessman”; he was a “telecommunications magnate.” So as not to waste a moment, Mr. Boland raced about the Tri-River Region in a Bolandvision 12 helicopter. Unfortunately, private helicopter pads were one of the few places where parents circulating petitions did not set up card tables, leaving the telecommunications magnate totally disconnected on this one.

  Mrs. Boland, too, was clueless. She had recently realized she was exhausted from all her zoning work. Out of her own pocket, she had hired the top advertising firm in the Tri-River Region to put together a five-minute video clip on her vision for Tremble in the next century. She planned to use it to kick off the December zoning board meeting. She told the video crew to spare no expense and suggested that for background music they use a recording of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” With everything in place for the meeting, she realized as usual the one person she had neglected was herself and did the only thing that made sense: jetted down to Saint Kitts for two weeks of tropical sun. She wanted to look her best for the big meeting.

  Herb Black and Herb Green knew all about the petitions. It seemed every time the Herbs stopped at the Marvel Ice Cream stand or the Tasty Choice doughnut shack for a little pick-me-up, someone would ask them to sign a petition.

  The Herbs had stopped red-tagging hoops during daylight hours. Once word got out, people were pretty hostile. A man who caught them in the act had run out his front door, scaring the Herbs so, they had dived for cover in a neighbor’s hedges. While the Herbs prayed for their lives, the man raced around their county vehicle, slapping a roll of his daughter’s yellow happy-face stickers all over the car.

  Later the Herbs remarked that for such happy little faces, they were an enormous pain to remove without scratching the vehicle.

  Since then the Herbs had worked an 11 P.M. to 7 A.M. shift to finish all 1,048 red tags. They didn’t mind; they got an extra fifty cents an hour differential for the night shift.

  The closer the zoning meeting got, the more nervous the Herbs grew. Every time the phone rang, they were sure it was Mrs. Boland, but it was just another complaint from some basketball hothead.

  Herb Green wondered if they ought to interrupt Mrs. Boland’s vacation to warn her about the petitions. “I don’t know, Herb,” said Herb Black. “You know my philosophy — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

  “But, you know,” said Herb Green. “I think it might be broke.”

  “Well, Herb,” said Herb Black. “You understand how Mrs. Boland has her heart set on tearing down every last hoop. She has got a major case of red-tag fever. If you want to call and tell her she’s making a mistake, you go ahead. But do me a favor, Herb? Make sure, in a nice loud, clear voice, you say, ‘This is Herb Green calling, not Herb Black, repeat not Herb Black.’”

  Herb Green mulled that over. “You know, Herb,” he finally said. “Maybe I won’t call.”

  As much as Adam loved world history class, he was having trouble concentrating. It seemed no matter what the topic, no matter how ancient and far away the historic period, Adam felt like it was about him. And the omens were all rotten. Just when one of Mr. Brooks’s lessons seemed headed for a happy ending, a disastrous turn of events would undo all the hopeful stuff and make Adam feel miserable about his own prospects.

  They discussed how brave and noble Brutus had been to assassinate his buddy Caesar in order to preserve Rome’s republic. That made Adam-Brutus feel hopeful about his epic struggle with Marris, until they got to the part about Adam-Brutus being defeated in battle, killing himself, the republic being smashed, and the dictatorship returning.

  And Cleopatra — what a nightmare. Every time Cleopatra-Marris seemed about to be dethroned, she hooked up with some big shot like Augustus or Marc Antony or Sumner J. Boland and went right on ruling Egypt like her usual dastardly self.

  In the unit on world explorers, Adam felt at one with Christopher Columbus, out on the open seas against all odds, showing those idiots in England, France, Portugal, and on the early bus that it really was a round world. But then they get to the part where Adam-Columbus is considered a despot by his own men, gets shipped back to Spain in chains, and dies in “poverty and neglect.” Those were the exact words in the book: “poverty and neglect.” What was that about? They couldn’t even cook up a happy ending for Columbus? If the most famous explorer in history went down the tube, what chance did Adam have?

  In his world history essay for the first-term final, Adam laid all this out in excruciating detail and more — pointing out that Virgil died before finishing the Aeneid, Archimedes was murdered by some idiot Roman, and Magellan did not make it around the world.

  Mr. Brooks had never read a bleaker vision of world history from a Harris student, and on the day the exams were returned asked Adam to stop by after school. “It’s nothing bad,” Mr. Brooks said. “Your grasp of the material is superb. I just wanted to share a few thoughts.”

  After school the teacher gave Adam a warm welcome — Salve, amicus! — and motioned for him to sit. Adam flopped down in the front row.

  Mr. Brooks perched himself atop a student desk across from Adam.

  “You know, Adam,” said Mr. Brooks, “you are one of the finest students I’ve taught. But I’m worried. Your essay . . . It was . . . How to put this? . . . Devoid of all hope. I was wondering, are you all right? You don’t strike me as that kind of person. You always seem so full of life.”

  Adam shrugged and in a barely audible voice said, “It’s not my fault all the great people had miserable endings.”

  “But not quite that miserable,” said Mr. Brooks. “Some may have fallen short of their bold dreams, but what they achieved . . .”

  “And the bad people,” said Adam, “they just went on and on creating mayhem and havoc.”

  “I grant you,” said Mr. Brooks, “Cleopatra did hang on for a long time, but in the end, you mustn’t forget my lecture — how the inevitability of Rome’s rise caught up with her and there was that quite dramatic poison-snake-to-the-bosom finale.”

  Adam nodded. “One person,” he mumbled.

  “Not one person,” said Mr. Brooks. “I don’t think I’m giving away too much world history to say that if you stay tuned, you will find that Franklin Roosevelt saves the nation from the Depression and the evil Hitler, that a world government known as the United Nations gets formed and endures, and in less than a century — a millimeter on the global timeline — Russia throws off monarchy and communism and chooses democracy.

  “You know,” Mr. Brooks went on, “history certainly teaches us that treachery lurks around every corner. And yet, against all odds, despite every form of human stupidity, we Homo sapiens are still here.”

  “Yeah, right,” Adam mumbled. “What about Rwanda?”

  “Well, yes . . . I don’t deny . . . Look, Adam, my point is I’m worried that all you’re seeing is the bad. Is anything wrong?”

  Adam hesitated. He didn’t know if he should tell Mr. Brooks the truth. What use was it? Mr. Brooks seemed even more afraid of Marris than Adam was. That last talk they had about Marris had left Adam feeling so blue, so powerless, so embarrassed for Mr. Brooks. If Mr. Brooks didn’t stand up for his own World Domination game, why would he help them on the Miss Bloch story? This man had talked so much about how important it was to preserve his dignity and privacy and his bachelor life. What was that about? Just a fancy way of saying he was afraid to lose to Marris? Adam wondered what the Latin word was for “coward.”

  Jennifer had begged Adam to as
k Mr. Brooks for help on the Miss Bloch story. She insisted that this was different from World Domination. She kept saying, “You’re wrong; he’ll help — you’re his favorite.” She said sometimes it was easier for a person like Mr. Brooks to stand up for someone else than for himself. She said maybe Mr. Brooks had personal reasons for not wanting to be the center of attention, but he might not mind helping on this one little point when it wasn’t all about him.

  Adam couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bear watching this teacher he thought he admired groveling out of another fight with Marris.

  “No, Mr. Brooks,” Adam answered. “Nothing’s wrong, just really busy.”

  The teacher eyed him. “How’s the November issue of the Slash coming along? I tell you, that October issue was so good, it will be a hard act for you to follow.”

  Adam nodded. Mr. Brooks didn’t know the half of it. Adam was getting a pretty certain feeling that the November Slash would be their final act.

  “Working on any interesting stories?” asked Mr. Brooks. “Or is that privileged information?”

  Adam shrugged. “Just the usual.”

  Now Mr. Brooks nodded.

  The older Adam got, the more he talked to adults, the more confused and disappointed he was. He felt like such a moron for thinking adults knew everything. One of the things he’d liked about Mr. Brooks was the man’s ideas always seemed fresh. Now that Adam had come to know him a little behind the scenes, he realized Mr. Brooks could blather on just like the rest of them.

  “Mr. Brooks,” said Adam, “I’ll try to have a better view of the world. I promise. Is there anything else? I’ve got to get to voluntary/mandatory.”

  Mr. Brooks raised his eyebrows. “Certainly wouldn’t want to be late for that.”

  Adam smiled. “Yeah, we’re probably practicing sharpening number-two pencils today.” He picked up his backpack to leave.

  “Um, Adam,” said Mr. Brooks. “I don’t quite know how to say this. When I was at Harvard a hundred years ago, they didn’t teach journalism. It was considered a trade, like plumbing or bricklaying. So I don’t really know the formal rules of the journalist. But this . . . I guess you’d call him a source — from the Latin, by the way, surgere . . . Well, this source-person told me that you kids might need some help for a story you’re doing on Mrs. Marris.”