Stand Tall

by Joan Bauer

And here’s the first question we can discuss. How are we all feeling this Christmas season?

  In the response section was a three-word reply from Larry, a freshman at Penn State.

  I’ve got gas, Larry wrote.

  Tree started laughing. He could see his mother’s smile getting tight when she read that.

  Very funny, she’d replied. Humor is one of the ways to diffuse feelings of alienation and frustration at the holidays.

  Then up on the screen was a response from his brother Curtis, a sophomore at the University of New Hampshire.

  I’ve got more gas than you.

  Tree really laughed now. He knew his mom was trying to reach out, but how she did it sometimes was hard.

  His mother wrote, It’s certainly nice you’re learning such cogent ways of communicating at college. It’s certainly nice that you’ve bothered to respond at all.

  Tree tried to think of what he could write back. He ate some barbecue potato chips, burped twice. Maybe I’ve got more gas than anybody.

  Tree really broke up at this and wished his best friend, Sully Devo, was here. Sully had the best laugh of anyone Tree knew. Sully would laugh so hard, he’d fall off a chair and say, “You’re killing me, you’re killing me,” then he’d pull himself together, sit down, and start cracking up all over again.

  He clicked on the elf. “Deck the Halls” began to play in that computer-generated musical way.

  He shut the computer down. Watched his mother’s cyber self disappear from the screen.

  On-line quality time, she called it.

  He looked at the empty wall where the big hutch used to be.

  His mother had taken it when she moved out. The shadows of where it had been remained. His dad said they were going to get a new hutch, but they hadn’t yet.

  His dad said they were going to repaint the downstairs so the darkened places on the walls where the pictures had hung—the ones his mother took when she moved out—would be gone.

  They hadn’t done that, either.

  Divorce casts so many shadows.

  Tree and his brothers had helped her move out.

  Their old dog, Bradley, kept going up to Tree’s mother to get rubbed, and every time he did, she’d start to cry. Bradley tried to climb in the U-Haul truck, but Tree’s father dragged him back into the house.

  Tree’s grandpa spoke for everyone: “My God, Jan, I’m going to miss you like crazy.”

  It was like a sci-fi movie where someone is there one minute, gone the next.

  Poof.

  Curtis said he’d seen the breakup coming.

  Larry knew Mom was going to leave Dad, too.

  Tree sure hadn’t. It was like watching floodwaters burst through a dam he’d always expected to hold.

  Tree tried to understand how his parents went from seeming okay, but kind of bored and crabby, to living in different houses.

  They’d waited to get divorced until Larry had gone to college.

  Why hadn’t they waited for Tree to go, too?

  He stretched his long legs out. His muscles were sore, which meant he was growing more.

  He wondered when he’d stop. He’d been wondering that for years.

  In first grade when he sat on a stool for the class picture while the other kids stood around him.

  In second grade when Mr. Cosgrove had to add another panel to the “How Tall Am I?” poster just for him.

  In third grade when he got stuck in a desk and Mr. Cosgrove had to pry him out.

  In fourth grade when he played a kind tree in the school play and no one had to sit on his shoulders to be the branches.

  In fifth grade when he was Frankenstein at the Women’s Auxiliary’s House of Horrors and scared Timmy Bigelow’s sister so bad, she peed in her pants.

  In sixth grade when he was taller than his teachers and the principal.

  And this year, seventh grade, when he just sat in the back at the table because he was too big for the desks.

  The back table wasn’t so bad.

  Bradley padded over, put his paw in Tree’s hand. Bradley understood when people needed comfort. The older and slower Bradley got, the more he seemed to know.

  “Good dog.”

  Tree scratched Bradley’s head, massaged his neck like the vet showed him.

  “We’ve got to practice your trick.”

  Tree walked into the kitchen, Bradley followed. Tree got out a large dog biscuit from the canister.

  “Bradley, sit.”

  Bradley sat.

  “Good dog.”

  Tree got the picture he’d drawn of a sitting dog balancing a biscuit on his nose. He showed it to Bradley, who looked at it. Tree had invented this method of dog training.

  “Okay, that’s what you’re going to do. Ready?”

  Tree balanced the biscuit on Bradley’s nose, put his hand out in the stay command. Bradley sat still, balancing it, as Tree timed him with his watch.

  People think you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but an old dog is going to pay attention when you’re doing something serious.

  After forty-five seconds, the biscuit dropped, Bradley ate it.

  “Good dog.”

  He made Bradley his dinner, put it on the floor. He made two serious submarine sandwiches with extra meat and cheese, put them in a bag.

  A car horn outside.

  “That’s my ride, Bradley. I’ve got to go see Grandpa.”

  Bradley looked up, wagged his tail.

  Seeing Grandpa was the best part of the week for just about anybody.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Is that man behaving himself or being difficult?”

  Mrs. Clitter half shouted the question over the phone.

  Tree held the receiver, looked at his grandfather lying in the hospital bed at the VA with half a leg all bandaged up. The VA is a special hospital for people who’ve served in the military.

  “She wants to know if you’re behaving yourself.”

  “Tell her I’m dead.”

  “Grandpa . . .” Tree covered the receiver.

  “Tell her I have amnesia.”

  “She’ll come and take care of you.”

  “Tell her I escaped.” He motioned for Tree to hang up.

  Tree sighed, phone to his ear. “He’s behaving. But he’s got to get some sleep, Mrs. Clitter.”

  “Let me just say good night.”

  Tree extended the phone. Grandpa shook his head, made snoring noises.

  Tree: “He’s already asleep, ma’am.”

  “You tell him I’ll call in the morning.”

  Tree hung up the phone.

  Grandpa raised a tired hand. “That woman needs a hobby.”

  “Sounds like she’s got one,” said Wild Man Finzolli, Grandpa’s roommate. “You.”

  A loud groan from the old soldier.

  Tree scrunched down in the vinyl chair that had been designed by a short person, rearranged his body to get comfortable.

  Sometimes it seemed like the whole world had been designed by people shorter than him.

  Airplane seats were misery.

  Mattresses were never long enough.

  Regular clothes didn’t fit—he had to shop at the Big Guy Shop in Baltimore.

  Regular shoes were out—he had to order from the Big Foot catalog.

  The pediatrician had run tests to see if Tree had some kind of condition that made him so tall, like Marfan’s syndrome or giantism.

  He didn’t.

  “You’re just unusually large,” Dr. Flemmer said, like that explained it.

  Tree shoved his long legs out.

  He couldn’t imagine losing a leg.

  A young nurse came in to change Grandpa’s bandage. “How are you, Mr. Benton?”

  “It’s getting harder for me to sneak up on people.”

  She laughed, unrolled the bandages down to the stump. Tree didn’t want to look, but he did. The leg stump looked better than it had the first day—a big raw wound with staples. It still looked
pretty angry.

  But his grandfather wasn’t into bellyaching.

  Hadn’t been since the Vietnam War, when his leg got shot up with shrapnel when he was on a night patrol in the Mekong Delta. There had been multiple surgeries to try and fix it, but like the Vietnam War, that leg just wouldn’t behave.

  “Take it off,” Grandpa finally said to his doctor. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

  And the long road back to healing began.

  First, he’d be in a wheelchair.

  Then, he’d get around with a walker.

  Months later, he’d be fitted for a prosthetic leg—a leg specially made to take the place of the old one.

  Tree’s grandfather wanted that new leg bad.

  The nurse put on a fresh bandage and left.

  Grandpa slid to the end of the bed, sat up. His arms were strong. He nodded to Tree, who brought the walker over.

  They’d been practicing this.

  Good leg on the floor.

  “Lean on me, Grandpa.”

  He did. Tree took the weight. If there was ever a reason to be a too-tall seventh-grader, it was so you could help your grandpa get walking again.

  Tree’s grandpa steadied himself as Tree held on tight to the walker. Slowly, Grandpa moved it forward.

  “Awright, Leo,” Wild Man shouted. “Reach for the stars.”

  “I lost my leg, Finzolli, not my arm.”

  Slow moving to the door and back. Grandpa plopped down on the bed.

  “That’s a couple miles, right?”

  “At least,” Tree said, smiling.

  Grandpa grinned back. “You want to take apart an ugly lamp and make it uglier?”

  Tree really wanted to do that.

  He got the trunk out from under the bed, opened it to his grandfather’s tools of the trade—pliers, wires, sockets, plugs. Grandpa was a master electrician who repaired lamps in his workshop above the garage. He’d brought this to the hospital so he wouldn’t go crazy.

  They worked for two hours, not counting the time it took to eat the two submarine sandwiches and the two bags of barbecue potato chips Tree had brought with him. They took the lamp apart, laid the pieces on the bed, examined the insides. Talked about how the wires had been broken and the power couldn’t get to the bulb.

  “When that happens, nothing works,” Grandpa said. “Kind of like life.”

  They glued nails around the base. Grandpa searched in the trunk, held up a rubber tarantula.

  “I’ve been saving this bug for the finishing touch.” He hung it off the lamp’s side.

  They rigged up a little motor that rotated the lamp and shot the tarantula’s shadow against the wall in creepy red light.

  It was the best lamp in the universe.

  “That,” said Belle, the night nurse, “is disgusting.”

  Tree was so proud.

  Disgusting is what they were going for.

  Belle folded her arms across her chest. “You’re not supposed to have tools in the room, Leo. You know that.”

  “Belle, I’m saving you grief. Let me tinker around here, or I’ll get so bored, I’ll start taking this hospital apart piece by piece.”

  “Someone already beat you to it,” shouted Wild Man, looking at the peeling paint, the broken TV.

  Tree couldn’t wait for his grandpa to come home.

  Tree’s father was late picking him up at the hospital. He’d never been too punctual, but since the divorce, he was so late for everything.

  Tree’s mother had been the time sheriff.

  It was one of the things Tree’s parents always fought about.

  Nine P.M. Visiting hours had been over for a half hour. Tree was getting nervous that something had happened to his dad.

  Things made him more nervous these days.

  At nine-thirty, a nurse going off duty said Tree had to leave.

  Tree got really upset at that.

  “Put on one of those patient robes,” Grandpa told him. “Those awful things that flop open in the back. Sit on the empty bed and look wounded.”

  Tree did this, feeling strange. A hospital attendant came in at ten, stared at Tree. “I don’t remember you here before.”

  “He just got transferred,” Grandpa explained.

  “Where’s his chart?”

  “On its way up,” said Wild Man.

  Tree slumped his shoulders, tried to look wounded.

  The attendant walked closer. “Where’d you come from, soldier?”

  Tree tried to think of a recent war and couldn’t, so he said, “Canada.”

  The attendant looked surprised. “Canada?”

  “It was a secret mission,” Grandpa said.

  “It saved the Republic,” Wild Man whispered.

  Tree tried to look brave and humble.

  “This one’s got some stories to tell,” Grandpa added.

  Tree sniffed. “I got a few.” He’d heard a cowboy say that in a movie once.

  Then, thankfully, the attendant’s beeper went off and he headed for another room.

  His grandpa gave him a thumbs-up; Wild Man said he seemed so much like a real soldier, he could have fooled a five-star general.

  A regular-sized kid couldn’t have pulled that off.

  Tree’s father rushed into the room like he’d driven a hundred miles an hour to get there.

  “Sorry. There was a problem with the computer at the store, we had a shoplifter, my best checker quit.”

  He managed a sporting goods store, or maybe it managed him.

  He looked at Grandpa. “How you doing, Pop?”

  “They’re going to paint my stump green for Christmas so we don’t have to look at the purple lines anymore.”

  He laughed. “That’s good, Pop.”

  He looked at Tree in the robe.

  “What’s this?”

  “I saved the Republic,” Tree explained, and went into the bathroom to get dressed.

  “Hold this here, Dad.”

  They were in the bathroom of their house, putting up rails around the toilet so Grandpa would have something to hold on to when he came home.

  Father and son looked at each other, wondered how the other was doing.

  “You okay?” Dad asked, looking up. Tree’s father was five-eleven.

  Tree nodded.

  “Good.” Dad slapped Tree’s back, relieved.

  He so wanted Tree to be okay. To look at this boy, it was easy to believe he was handling things.

  How could someone so big not be fine?

  “You okay, Dad?”

  Weak smile. “I’m just tired. Christmas, you know.”

  Tree knew.

  Christmas for retailers was crazy—the late hours, the difficult customers.

  But Tree’s dad was tired down deep.

  He tried to explain it with sports.

  “All this change, Tree, is kind of like trying to bat left-handed when you’ve been a righty all your life.”

  Tree mostly struck out. He could barely bat right-handed, much less left.

  “Divorce is like being in the fourth quarter with ten seconds left on the clock. They throw the ball to you and you get pushed back from the goal. You can’t make it over. You don’t make the play-offs.”

  Tree had always been one of those linemen anyone could get by—even a small child—but he knew that not making the play-offs was a bad thing.

  Curtis and Larry were athletes. They spoke Dad’s language.

  Tree wanted to speak it, too. “It’s like you don’t get your contract renewed. Right, Dad? You get sent to the minors.”

  “Not exactly. . . .”

  Dad went to bed.

  Getting ready for bed, watching the clock tick off the seconds, minutes. On Saturday, Tree had taken the clock apart to see how it was made, and when he put it back together, there were two parts left on the table. He didn’t trust the clock much after that.

  He got into his queen-size bed, lay at an angle, covered himself with two blankets. Angle
sleeping gave him more room.

  He had heard that people grow when they sleep, so last year he’d tried to stay awake to stop his bones from expanding. He was so tired, he kept tripping over Bradley, who up to that time had felt safe sleeping in the hall.

  A cold draft blew into the room. He hadn’t minded a drafty room as much when his parents were still married, but his room seemed colder these days.

  He tried to sleep. Couldn’t.

  Got out the cool laser pen his father had gotten him from the sporting goods show at the convention center.

  Took out the insides. Put each part on the desk. Studied the laser section—it was so small to make such a big light.

  There was a beauty in seeing how things worked, machines in particular.

  Grandpa taught him that.

  He put the pen back together piece by piece, saw the clean lines of each ink cartridge, the small tunnel for the laser beam that had to be fixed on the little battery just so. The batteries had to be put in the right way or the flashlight wouldn’t work. There was no other road to take in the battery world—the negative and positive ends had to be touching.

  He turned out the light and shone the laser on the wall, making circles and slashes like a space warrior.

  He wished life could be simple like a laser pen—with clean lines and a clear purpose.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Men . . .”

  Coach Glummer walked slowly across the basketball court in the Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School gym and studied the faces of his team, the Fighting Pit Bulls.

  “What, men, is the purpose of basketball?”

  This seemed like a trick question to Tree. Most of his school day had been filled with them.

  What is the purpose of an adverb?

  Why is grammar important?

  Who was the thirty-second president of the United States?

  Coach Glummer looked for an upturned face. “Darkus?”

  Steven Darkus, who was as bad at basketball as Tree, took a wild stab. “To make the basket?”

  “That’s it, Darkus. The purpose of basketball, the purpose of this team, is to make the basket again and again. We have failed in that purpose—with two exceptions.”

  The exceptions were Jeremy Liggins and Raul Cosada, the best players.

  He walked past the team. Stopped by the plaque the PTA put up after last year’s pitiful season—words of encouragement from Eleanor Roosevelt herself: