Deep Down Popular Page 8

  I heard Mr. Muzzle had to do some fancy footwork over at the Vocational Center to get Tiny included in our band. Tiny seems to make Quentin look smaller, while Quentin makes Tiny look even bigger. Quentin’s got some kind of look running across his face when he glances over at us, like he has something important in his upper left pocket.

  “Looks like Quentin and Tiny are tight as a drum,” says Conrad. “No pun intended.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “and I bet we’re gonna have to hang Quentin up by his ankles to get him to share what he knows.”

  At the back of the band is Mr. Muzzle. His feet are keeping the rhythm, but his face looks worn-out and his hair is all frazzled. I don’t mean average tired. I mean he looks like somebody recently went over him with a street-cleaning machine.

  After the parade, Cabanash County Elementary School Band doesn’t place in any category at all, but Conrad seems a little quiet, standing around kicking the curb gently with the edge of his leg brace.

  A lot of kids from the band have been hanging out in the street afterward, and Brice Buttonwood just came up and invited everyone standing there, except for Conrad and me, to Buttonwood’s Bowl-a-rama just off Main Street for his sister’s birthday after the parade. Conrad stood there like a sturdy old house in a storm, not moving, not showing anything until they were gone, and then he looked down at the curb. All the popular kids are so excited about the new Buttonwood’s Bowl-a-rama coming to the shopping mall soon ’cause it’s gonna have glow-in-the-dark bowling pins, glow-in-the-dark bowling balls, and glow-in-the-dark bowling shoes.

  Billy Guffy has been running around in his great loose flapping orange bathrobe, chasing Quentin Duster under the bleachers in the presentation area and then out along the parking lot. Quentin provoked it in the first place by stealing Billy Guffy’s curly orange wig and wearing it backwards. Now Billy Guffy’s mama just showed up in her car and she’s beeping the horn, and Quentin looks all sheepish and takes the wig off and throws it to Billy Guffy.

  Conrad and I move over toward the bleachers and we see Tiny Bailey sitting there eating a supersize sandwich all by himself. He’s got his nice big feet propped up and he’s sitting there chewing away. Quentin goes over to him, puts his hands on his hips, and says, “Nice job, Tiny.” Tiny doesn’t answer. He takes a bite of his sandwich. “I mean you whaled away at that drum and never missed a beat,” says Quentin, shaking his head back and forth. Tiny takes another bite of his sandwich.

  Finally Tiny says real slowly, “Well, did you ask him?”

  “Uh, no, but can do,” says Quentin, “can do, Tiny. Conrad, your mama still want to get rid of that big mess of T-shirts nobody wants?”

  “Maybe,” says Conrad. “You mean the ones that say Best Things in Life Aren’t Things? People don’t buy them. They pass right over them. She’s thinking of throwing them out or donating them.”

  “Well, tell her to donate them to me,” says Tiny, throwing the last of his sandwich into the dark cave of his open mouth.

  “What for?” says Conrad.

  Tiny doesn’t answer. Quentin looks at Conrad and I look at Quentin. Quentin’s eyes go all big like two eggs frying in a pan and he says, “Well, I imagine your mama would be more than pleased to donate those old shirts, Conrad. What do you say?” Then Quentin elbows Conrad and Conrad elbows Quentin back. And they start punching each other and kicking.

  Tiny balls up his sandwich paper and gets up, the biggest fifth-year senior you ever saw, and heads off toward town calling out, “Think it over. Let me know, Duster.”

  We’re left sitting here on the bleachers with everybody just about cleared out, leaving a lot of paper cups and candy wrappers here and there on the ground. Quentin looks extra hopped up. He gets out his little All-State Pennant that everybody in the band got as a thank-you and he waves it around in the air and he says, “You should have seen that popcorn we had afterwards, Conrad. Somebody put food coloring in it and it was all red, white, and blue and swimming in butter. Best popcorn I ever had.”

  Conrad looks over at that little pennant and his face has a round yearning look to it like he’s full up with Granddaddy’s word wistful. He looks at that little old three-colored plastic pennant like he is thirsty on a desert island and seeing a glass of water floating in the distance.

  So I say, “Hey, Conrad, just keep on renting that old saxophone. Come back next year so good everybody will freeze dead in their tracks. And anyway they got ice cream up at Mister Softee right now that’s only fifty cents a cone. Let’s go up there and suck up at least two apiece.”

  And that’s what we do. And the whole way there I’m thinking how sweet it is that Conrad hasn’t mentioned anything about any doctor or any impending operation today. And how for my part quitting band didn’t matter at all. I didn’t mind giving up that stupid trumpet. I just liked sitting with Conrad on the curb watching all those bands go by. For me there was no more perfect seat in the whole world. A fancy red velvet chair at the Grand Ole Opry that Mama always talks about couldn’t have been any better, far as I’m concerned.

  When I get home Mama has her head under the kitchen counter and Granddaddy’s leaning over her and they’re arguing about what went down the drain that shouldn’t have. Mama gets up off her knees and wipes her hands on her apron and says, “Jessie Lou, I looked for you earlier in the trumpet section when your band marched by and I didn’t see you. And where’s your trumpet case today?”

  “Oh, I quit band last week,” I say, opening the fridge and grabbing a handful of leftover Tater Tots.

  A look of light and joy passes across Mama’s face.

  “Honey,” she says, running a wet dishrag over the counter, “why don’t you try taking up the harp next time? It has such a delicate, pretty little sound.”

  Then Granddaddy starts hitting the drainpipe with a little hammer making a ferocious racket, and Mama sticks her head back under the counter and they start arguing again.

  So I just head for the stairs. Before long, I’m lying on my bed looking at the moon that appears to be lost and confused in a sea of moving clouds. Soon enough through the walls I can hear Granddaddy’s radio blaring away. He’s already listening to a call-in talk show like he always does. The program is discussing the question, “If aliens ever land on our native soil, should the government tell everybody or keep it quiet?”

  People are calling in to the radio show with their point of view about space aliens. Granddaddy called in one time on one of those talk shows, but he went on too long and he had to be cut off midway through a sentence. “Thank you, Mr. Ferguson,” they said before Granddaddy had a chance to get his point across.

  Melinda’s room is on the other side of me opposite from Granddaddy’s room. She’s got an old Patsy Cline CD playing. Patsy Cline is Mama’s favorite singer in the whole world and now Melinda likes her too. Melinda loves the song “Crazy,” and she’s probably trying to glue on those fake fingernails she bought in Charlottesville. I’m lying between both noises that become gibberish when mixed together, like Patsy Cline Meets the Space Aliens.

  Too bad my sister decided to love the same music as my mama ’cause country music drives Granddaddy crazy. He used to wear earmuffs around the house every time Mama had a country song playing. Granddaddy calls that stuff cornball garbage. Me, I like country songs. They’re kind of sad and have the sound of poetry about them, like one of my poems set to music.

  “Okay, folks, what would you do if an alien walked into your front yard? Call us at 555-3452. Hello, you’re on Ted’s Talk Time.”

  I don’t mean to feel grateful for what happened to Conrad’s leg, and I wish I could say I want it fixed. But if it does get fixed, he won’t need my help anymore. He’ll get so popular he won’t need anything. I wish, oh I wish, I wasn’t so terrible awful. I pull off all the new scabs on my legs so they’re rough and miserable-looking, so my knees will be sure to be covered in little white scars, so I’ll have to wrap myself in darkness when I grow up.

  And
I don’t feel sleepy at all and I wish I could get up and run down the road in the night and sit on the porch at the old house. Then I could look up and see every star in the sky and I could really imagine how Lewis and Clark could find their way by just looking at the heavens. It’s nice to think those stars are so regular and so reliable. It’s nice to think you could find your way in the dark wilderness by looking up above you at what is always there but hardly noticed.

  At school we have a half hour just before lunch when everybody’s supposed to work on their discovery reports. Mrs. Duster walks around the room, looking over everybody’s shoulder and waving her arms here and there like she’s conducting an orchestra. It makes me sorely uneasy that I haven’t committed anything to paper at all. You’d expect something like that of Quentin Duster, but me, I usually have my work done and I’m reading some book at the back of the room while I’m waiting for everybody to catch up. My mama used to introduce me to her friends by saying, “And this is Jessie Lou, my reader.” But I swear I haven’t cracked open a book since we started this crazy project.

  Quentin Duster saw Tiny Bailey up at Larry’s Laundromat last night. Tiny was doing his own laundry, and Quentin was up there ’cause his cousin works the evening shift. Quentin knew right away Tiny was the guy unloading the dryer next to him when one of Tiny’s giant mail-away socks fell out on the floor by Quentin’s feet. And Tiny said right then to Quentin, “Got an answer about those T-shirts?” We couldn’t get anything more out of Quentin about what else was said. All Quentin would tell us was that Tiny’s coveralls still looked just as greasy coming out of the washing machine as going in.

  Brice Buttonwood is almost done with his discovery report and he’s up at the popular table acting way cool. He’s got Tiffany B. holding a box of jumping crickets and they’re making a chart that shows the length of each hop of each cricket and they’re trying to show how if you feed a cricket this sugar water it jumps farther than the other crickets. Brice Buttonwood and Jenny Bonners and Tiffany B. are laughing and writing stuff down, and when Conrad goes over to see what they’re doing, they get kind of quiet. They don’t tear him to pieces like I’ve seen them do to some, but they just get sort of bored and kind of look through him like he’s a screen door.

  Still, Conrad seems to be chipper. He makes a few jokes, throws his pencil up in the air and catches it, and then goes back to look at his drawing from a standing angle. Now I can see the little fourth-grade girl with the braids and the squeaky voice going up to Conrad to tell him about the new cat she got from her aunt. She’s not stopping there either. She’s going on to explain who owned the cat before and why she likes the cat and all the names she’s thinking over. Conrad just keeps smiling and nodding and listening to her while he works on his drawing of an amazing robot with blinking lights on the paper in front of him.

  I look around me at everybody working away on their projects. I look at my teacher, who seems to be spinning and weaving and coaxing the air in front of each one of us. I think the time has come to tell Conrad and Quentin about the playing cards and the cans of soda up at the house. I think it’s time to tell them we should go up there and poke around.

  We get out early today. The teacher wants us to go to the library and work on our research. Quentin’s all excited about the early release and flies down the hall and out the door like a loose cannon. (Those are my mama’s words for Quentin. She goes, “That Quentin Duster’s a loose cannon.” But then she says that about a lot of people.) Conrad seems lighthearted and breezy about everything today. But me, I’m thinking, What do we do at the library? We haven’t got anything to look up yet. Quentin’s kind of strutting ahead of us and then turning around looking important.

  We get outside the library, and Quentin stands there looking up at us, squinting through his glasses. Conrad says, “What?”

  And Quentin says, “Took care of that problem.”

  “What problem, Quentin?” I say. Quentin reaches in his backpack and pulls out an old wrinkled index card that says on it, Quentin Duster, library file. Dinosaur Days of Yore checked out April 23, 2004. OVERDUE. FINE OWED. Somebody has written on the card, Mr. Duster is not allowed to check out books until this fine is taken care of and the book is returned.

  “It’s my file, my library record, my index card, shows what I took out and what I owe,” says Quentin.

  “Give me that thing,” says Conrad, grabbing the card. “Dinosaur Days of Yore … Quentin, that book is 730 days overdue! You owe big-time. Where did you get this card anyway?”

  “Never mind where I got it,” says Quentin, snatching the card back. “Just let’s see what I’m going to do with it.” And he holds the index card out in front of him and he rips it into tiny pieces. Lets it blow all over the road. “That’s the end of that,” he says, brushing off his hands. “I’m not paying a fine like that for Dinosaur Days of Yore. At twenty-five cents a day for 730 days, I owe almost two hundred dollars, and I’m not paying two hundred dollars for a book that isn’t even worth two cents.”

  Conrad shrugs his shoulders. “Well, Quentin, it’s up to you. What are you going do when they find out your index card is missing?”

  “They won’t know. They’ll just think I never existed.” Quentin says.

  “Then who are they going to think is playing Pac-Man in there all the time?” I say.

  “I’m going to tell them my name is Chester Winslow if they ask. Remember that kid who moved here for two months last year? That’ll put the whole matter to rest,” says Quentin.

  Brice Buttonwood, Tiffany B., and Jenny Bonners are lounging on the steps of the library, reminding me of a family of lazy lions stretched out on the cement terrain at the Roanoke Zoo. Conrad looks over at them and kind of partway smiles.

  “I saw some stuff up at that old lonesome house. Some stuff that might be helpful,” I say, rolling my eyes from Conrad to Brice and back.

  Quentin’s doing a combination of karate and kickboxing with an invisible opponent on the sidewalk. Every time he throws a kick or a punch at the sky, he looks out of the corner of his eyes up at the popular kids on the steps.

  “Come on,” I say again, “let’s go over to that house. I saw a bunch of stuff there.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?” says Quentin, kicking the air.

  “Like trust me,” I say, feeling like Sacagawea herself even though I didn’t get the part. Then I think about Sacagawea running along through the woods with a papoose on her back. Did the baby cry or did it just ride along in silence?

  I take off down the street and Quentin and Conrad follow. Soon enough we get on the dirt road that goes along the Cabanash River, and before you know it we’re almost to the house in the fields.

  The green this time of year is almost to be lime green. The grass so new and tender and so green as to almost make you cry. Then you hear those red-winged blackbirds and the bobwhites in the field and it’s so sweet and new as almost to feel like anguish itself. I’ve quit writing any more poems about spring. (I have tons.) Everybody tries and nobody can get close to the way it feels when the grass is in its green early childhood and most of the trees are still bare. It’s just pure beautiful anguish.

  Conrad goes up on the silvery weathered porch and leans against one of the windows, looking in. Quentin follows him, leaving muddy footsteps behind him and making a lot of noise. Through the window the rooms look so undisturbed. More than quiet. It’s a silence. As if everything is stopped still and waiting for something.

  “So what did you see?” Conrad whispers, getting steamy breath on the windowpane. It condenses and Quentin draws a Pac-Man smile in the condensation.

  I want to tell them how I feel about this house. Like it’s mine. I remember a while ago it was all boarded up. I remember seeing the wind and rain howling around it in the wintertime. I could almost see someone wrapping their arms around the house, looking for a way in. Now it’s opened up again, but it still has an empty gone boarded-up lonely feel. “See those cans of soda in there
? And a few days ago there were playing cards, but they’re gone now,” I say.

  “Meaning what?” says Quentin.

  “Meaning this,” says Conrad, turning the handle on the door and pushing it slowly open.

  “This might be a lame idea, Conrad,” says Quentin and then he looks startled, slaps his forehead, and goes, “Sorry, Conrad, didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It’s okay, lamebrain,” says Conrad, “hush now.” Conrad’s the only boy in Cabanash County who uses the word hush, and when he says it, his voice is warm and coaxing, making you hush, hush, hush deep down.

  Once inside the house, the cleanness and quietness soothes me. Even though I’m nervous ’cause I know we shouldn’t be in here, there’s a peaceful feeling coming from the floorboards. A calm order. All this time I’ve known this house from the outside only. I’ve never been inside. Now I’m inside looking out at the old maple tree in the front yard, at the windy fields across the road. It looks so different being inside looking out instead of outside looking in. It’s a whole new view of everything.

  The house has old furniture in it, fabric at the windows in back from some other time, and dishes too that look like they’re from even before Mama was born. When I open the closet door in the plain quiet bedroom, there are old dresses and coats in there like what people wore around the time of World War II. It feels strange and at the same time it feels familiar, like I know it already. Conrad and Quentin are sitting around throwing cards at each other that they found in a little box on the table, and I go to the window to watch the wind moving the grass.

  “Hey, somebody want a soda?” says Quentin, holding up a can of Dr. Pepper. I turn around to look at what he’s holding up and I see right behind him one of the Day-Glo orange vests everybody wore on the senior citizens’ walkathon last week, hanging over the back of a chair, and there’s a huge pair of work boots in the corner. But I’m not gonna say anything. Not yet anyway.