Okay for Now (32 page)

He looked at me, sweating.

"What do you have that goofy grin on your face for?" he said.

"Do it again," I said.

He backed up to the next step, leaned back, hefted up, sweated.

"Not bad," I said.

The third step, and he almost went over that time, but he caught himself, and leaned forward a little

bit more, and then the fourth, and fifth, and then he drew himself back to the sixth, and grunted and

pulled, and came back down onto the fifth.

"No. Stay put, little brother."

I did. You would have too.

He backed up again, waited for a moment, leaned to the left and pulled up, squeezing his eyes tight,

and brought the chair half up, then leaned to the right, squeezed his eyes again, and so came over the

last step of the Marysville Free Public Library. He was breathing a little bit heavily.

So was I.

"Not bad," I said.

"It's all in the balance," Lucas said.

"You were a little slow."

"I'll practice."

That smile.

Then the library door opened and out came—and you're not going to believe this, but it was June,

and as true as true—out came Coach Reed. From the library.

I'm not lying.

"Pretty good," he said to Lucas.

"Thanks," said Lucas.

"It would take a lot of strength to pull yourself up like that."

"I guess," said Lucas.

"I guess," said Coach Reed. He looked at me. "Your brother?"

I nodded.

"Jack Reed," he said to Lucas. Then he held the door of the library open so that Lucas could wheel

himself through. Lucas probably didn't want him to, but after a day of trying to fit your wheelchair

through the doors of places that didn't want you, he might have been glad to have someone hold the

door.

I looked at Coach Reed as I went through.

He looked back at me.

I went on in, and over to the elevator.

"Hey—" Coach Reed.

Lucas stopped and slowly spun himself around. And you know what? He looked like he was going

to be okay. He might be tired and beat up, but he was going to be okay. That's what he looked like.

And it was June. I bet Arctic terns fly strong in June.

"I hear you've been looking for a job," said Coach Reed.

"That's right." Old Lucas voice.

"Any luck?"

"Yeah," said Lucas. "Yeah, lots of luck. Everyone around here says that a guy in a wheelchair is

just the kind of guy they've been looking for. I'm trying to decide between, I don't know, eight or nine

offers."

"Sounds tough."

Lucas started to spin around again.

"Maybe you could come work for me," said Coach Reed.

He really said that. June.

But Lucas didn't believe him.

"Funny," Lucas said. "Really funny. You ought to be on stage. You could make a living telling Guys

with Missing Legs jokes. They're not as funny as Guys with Missing Arms jokes, but maybe you could

come up with some of those too."

"I'm not kidding."

Lucas wheeled himself closer. Still old Lucas.

"So what do you want me to do? Coach track? Maybe the high jump? Or the pole vault? I'm a heck

of a pole vaulter."

Coach Reed looked at me, then back at my brother. "Maybe track. Maybe gymnastics. I saw you

come up the stairs. Maybe weight training. I have a feeling you might be able to do a whole lot of

things that you don't think you can."

"How do you know?"

Coach Reed looked at me again. "Because I was there too."

Long silence.

"I need an assistant," said Coach Reed.

"Then maybe you better find someone who—"

"Assistant Junior High School Gym Coach. There are two weeks left in this school year. If you

started now, you could get your feet wet and be ready for September."

"If you notice, I don't have any—"

"Monday morning. Seven o'clock in the morning. We're beginning the last Basketball Unit. If you're

there, the job is yours—that is, if you think you can keep a bunch of junior high kids from pulling any

funny business on you."

"I won't be there," said Lucas.

Coach Reed looked at me.

"Yes sirree, buster," I said. "He'll be there."

"All right," Coach Reed said, and went on down the steps.

I think I could have kissed him.

Lucas looked at me. "I'm not going to take a job I can't do."

"You're right," I said. "I don't think you can handle it."

Lucas stared, like the old Lucas was going to say something. But the old Lucas didn't. Instead,

Lucas nodded, and his face got all set and determined. And then he started to smile. He spun his chair

around.

Mrs. Merriam walked up. She had her glasses on, so she didn't look so loopy.

Lucas laughed. He laughed!

"Can I help you?" she said to him.

"I think I'm fine," he said.

We took the elevator upstairs.

Lucas didn't mind the steel gate that we had to draw across. And he didn't mind the way the

elevator rattled around on its way up. And he didn't mind the sound of the pulleys straining

themselves. And he didn't mind that at the top, the elevator stopped a couple of inches below the

floor. He jerked his chair up and pulled himself over the lip.

At the table where Lil usually worked, Mr. Powell was mixing watercolors. "You're late," he said.

"Lucas had a job interview," I said.

"For what position?"

"Assistant Junior High School Gym Coach," said Lucas. "We start a Basketball Unit on Monday."

And you know what? I'm not lying. Mr. Powell didn't seem surprised at all. "Make them do free

throws," he said. "Free throws discipline the mind and the eye and the hand. There's nothing like

them."

Lucas laughed. So good. "It sounds like you know what you're talking about."

Mr. Powell raised an eyebrow. "I'm a librarian," he said. "I always know what I'm talking about.

Mr. Swieteck, does this gray look right?"

We went over to the table which, you might remember, my Arctic Tern was on top of. "Who drew

this?" Lucas said. He didn't need to lean down so close anymore.

"Your brother," said Mr. Powell.

Lucas touched the edge of the paper.

"It's a copy," I said.

"My brother?" said Lucas. He leaned forward. "It looks like he's flying off the page."

"He's falling into the water," I said.

Lucas shook his head. "No, he's not. He's going wherever he wants to go."

"Exactly right," said Mr. Powell, and he handed me a paintbrush.

You know what it feels like to stroke color onto an Arctic Tern flying off the page, going wherever

he wants to go?

Terrific.

It was June, you remember.

On Monday, Lucas left the house before I did. By himself. Heading to Washington Irving Junior

High School. I went down to the gym between periods to watch him practice free throws from his

chair. (The stats weren't so good, but if you remember, stats don't mean anything.) During lunch—

which I had again—I watched Lucas run basketball drills. And at the end of the day, he was gathering

up loose basketballs when I came in, and James Russell was calling out, "Coach Swieteck!"

You think Lucas wasn't smiling when he heard that?

You think I wasn't smiling when I heard that?

I waved, and Lucas waved, and I went into Coach Reed's office. He had the Presidential Physical

Fitness charts spread out, and he was going through each one with his finger on the lines. He paused

and looked up at me.

"Thanks," I said.

"Go home," he said.

June.

Somehow the message had gone out to all the teachers that the last two weeks of school were the

last opportunity to bury the students of Washington Irving Junior High in work. Every other school in

the country was getting ready for campouts and parties to celebrate the end of the year. But not us.

In world history, Mr. McElroy was starting the Causes of World War I. You know how many

Causes there were for World War I? No wonder they fought.

In English, Miss Cowper said we were going to finish the year with selections from John

Steinbeck's
Travels with Charley,
which didn't sound bad because Charley is a dog and how bad

could a dog story get? And it wasn't bad, except we had to keep notes about Steinbeck's technique

because we were going to be writing our own travel accounts—fictional or nonfictional—for the

year's final composition.

Doesn't that sound all-fired exciting?

In Advanced Algebra, Mrs. Verne told us that she was going to end the year with an Introduction to

Geometry, and when we pointed out that Geometry wasn't taught until tenth grade, she congratulated

us on our powers of observation and told us all to be sure to bring protractors the next day.

In PE, we were practicing free throws. Every day. Lots of free throws. Because they were

supposed to discipline the mind and the eye and the hand.

I didn't complain to the coach.

In physical science, Mr. Ferris announced that NASA had given the go-ahead and in just a month,

Apollo 11 would blast off to the moon. This is what happens when you dream dreams, he said. He

couldn't stop smiling, not even when he was describing the thermodynamics of the fuel for the Saturn

rocket that would carry the command capsule and the LEM. Otis Bottom asked if we were going to

make some fuel to see if it would explode. Even then, Mr. Ferris could not stop smiling.

In geography, we had gotten all the way over to France, and Mr. Barber started us on Maps of

France Under Louis the Fourteenth—or maybe it was the Fifteenth—and we were supposed to copy

all the important rivers and mountains and cities and towns and underline places that Louis the

Fourteenth or Fifteenth had visited according to
Geography: The Story of the World.

I'm not lying, the map that I drew was something that you would stop to look at. Audubon himself

would have stopped and whistled, which is just what Mr. Barber did. Then he crouched next to me,

and the scent of his coffee steamed up.

"Douglas, did you trace that?"

"Nope."

"And those seagulls?"

"I thought they would add realism."

"They're fantastic," Mr. Barber said.

"Thanks," I said.

He whistled again. Then he stood up and took a step.

You know one thing that Mr. Powell taught me? He taught me that sometimes, art can make you

forget everything else all around you. That's what art can do. And I guess that's what happened to Mr.

Barber, who forgot that his left foot was behind the back leg of my chair. Who took a step without

remembering to take his foot away from the back of my chair. Who tripped, but caught himself. But

who couldn't catch the coffee that flew out of his cup, swirled around in the air for a second, and

finally splashed down all over my
Geography: The Story of the World
and started to soak into the

pages as fast as it could.

I won't tell you the sound that Mr. Barber made. It was something like the shriek an insane woman

who has been locked in an attic for a great many years would make.

***

Pepitone's jacket. He wouldn't even look at me during supper. Which was fine, just fine. My mother

covered the silence with talk about orchids, and Lucas couldn't stop talking about his job if someone

had threatened to bloody, bloody murder him if he said another word. "They call me Coach

Swieteck," he said. "Can you believe that? Coach Swieteck."

"Even if you can't shoot a free throw worth diddly?" said Christopher.

"Seventy-five percent from the free-throw line," Coach Swieteck said, which is a stat that he was

probably stretching really far. I mean, really far.

"That's something you dreamed, you mean," said Christopher.

"Chris, why don't you open your mouth, look up to the ceiling, and we'll see how many of these

carrots I can make from here?"

"Lucas," said my mother.

"It's all right," said Christopher. "I'm not going to do it. He'd probably get them all in, just for spite.

Isn't that right, Coach?"

"Absolutely. "

My mother started laughing. You know how good it is to see my mother laugh?

My father left the table.

My mother stopped laughing.

Lucas began eating his carrots.

Christopher held his fork still over his plate.

"Isn't the orchid delicate in this light?" said my mother.

June.

A week before Christopher's hearing—which the Town of Marysville was taking its time setting up,

probably to make him sweat—my father stopped eating supper with us. He'd fill a plate in the kitchen

before we started and then go into the bedroom. He didn't come out afterward. So what? So what? No

one cared. Except maybe my mother.

None of us talked about the hearing. None of us talked about what might happen. None of us used

the word
jail.
Would you?

Except at the hospital. At the hospital, I could talk about it.

"You know that your brother didn't break into the stores, right?" said Lil.

I nodded.