Okay for Now (35 page)

architect from Hoodhood and Associates.

My mother was in the kitchen, fanning air out the open window and putting out a cigarette, because

I wasn't supposed to know that she smoked, and if I did know, I wasn't supposed to say anything, and I

really
wasn't supposed to tell my father.

And that's when it came to me, even before the Twinkie.

I needed to have an ally in the war against Mrs. Baker.

"How was your first day?" my mother said.

"Mom," I said, "Mrs. Baker hates my guts."

"Mrs. Baker doesn't hate your guts." She stopped fanning and closed the window.

"Yes, she does."

"Mrs. Baker hardly knows you."

"Mom, it's not like you have to know someone well to hate their guts. You don't sit around and have

a long conversation and then decide whether or not to hate their guts. You just do. And she does."

"I'm sure that Mrs. Baker is a fine person, and she certainly does not hate your guts."

How do parents get to where they can say things like this? There must be some gene that switches

on at the birth of the first-born child, and suddenly stuff like that starts to come out of their mouths. It's

like they haven't figured out that the language you're using is English and they should be able to

understand what you're saying. Instead, you pull a string on them, and a bad record plays.

I guess they can't help it.

Right after supper, I went to the den to look for a new ally.

"Dad, Mrs. Baker hates my guts."

"Can you see that the television is on and that I'm watching Walter Cronkite?" he said.

We listened to Walter Cronkite report on the new casualty figures from Vietnam, and how the air

war was being widened, and how two new brigades of the 101st Airborne Division were being sent

over, until CBS finally threw in a commercial.

"Dad, Mrs. Baker hates my guts."

"What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything. She just hates my guts."

"People don't just hate your guts unless you do something to them. So what did you do?"

"Nothing."

"This is Betty Baker, right?"

"I guess."

"The Betty Baker who belongs to the Baker family."

See what I mean about that gene thing? They miss the entire point of what you're saying.

"I guess she belongs to the Baker family," I said.

"The Baker family that owns the Baker Sporting Emporium."

"Dad, she hates my guts."

"The Baker Sporting Emporium, which is about to choose an architect for its new building and

which is considering Hoodhood and Associates among its top three choices."

"Dad..."

"So, Holling, what did you do that might make Mrs. Baker hate your guts, which will make other

Baker family members hate the name of Hoodhood, which will lead the Baker Sporting Emporium to

choose another architect, which will kill the deal for Hoodhood and Associates, which will drive us

into bankruptcy, which will encourage several lending institutions around the state to send

representatives to our front stoop holding papers that have lots of legal words on them—none of them

good—and which will mean that there will be no Hoodhood and Associates for you to take over

when I'm ready to retire?"

Even though there wasn't much left of the ham and cheese and broccoli omelet, it started to want to

come up again.

"I guess things aren't so bad," I said.

"Keep them that way," he said.

This wasn't exactly what I had hoped for in an ally.

There was only my sister left. To ask your big sister to be your ally is like asking Nova Scotia to go

into battle with you.

But I knocked on her door anyway. Loudly, since the Monkees were playing.

She pulled it open and stood there, her hands on her hips. Her lipstick was the color of a new fire

engine.

"Mrs. Baker hates my guts," I told her.

"So do I," she said.

"I could use some help with this."

"Ask Mom."

"She says that Mrs. Baker doesn't hate my guts."

"Ask Dad."

Silence—if you call it silence when the Monkees are playing.

"Oh," she said. "It might hurt a business deal, right? So he won't help the Son Who Is Going to

Inherit Hoodhood and Associates."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"If I were you, I'd head to California," she said.

"Try again."

She leaned against her door. "Mrs. Baker hates your guts, right?"

I nodded.

"Then, Holling, you might try getting some."

And she closed her door.

That night, I read
Treasure Island
again, and I don't want to brag, but I've read
Treasure Island
four

times and
Kidnapped
twice and
The Black Arrow
twice. I even read
Ivanhoe
halfway through before

I gave up, since I started
The Call of the Wild
and it was a whole lot better.

I skipped to the part where Jim Hawkins is stealing the
Hispaniola
and he's up on the mast and

Israel Hands is climbing toward him, clutching a dagger. Even so, Jim's in pretty good shape, since

he's got two pistols against a single dagger, and Israel Hands seems about to give in. "I'll have to

strike, which comes hard," he says. I suppose he hates Jim's guts right at that moment. And Jim smiles,

since he knows he's got him. That's guts.

But then Israel Hands throws the dagger, and it's just dumb luck that saves Jim.

And I didn't want to count on just dumb luck.

***

like what Israel Hands wanted to happen to Jim Hawkins.

It started first thing in the morning, when I caught her watching me come out of the Coat Room and

walk toward my desk.

By the way, if you're wondering why a seventh-grade classroom had a Coat Room, it isn't because

we weren't old enough to have lockers. It's because Camillo Junior High used to be Camillo

Elementary, until the town built a new Camillo Elementary and attached it to the old Camillo

Elementary by the kitchen hallway and then made the old Camillo Elementary into the new Camillo

Junior High. So all the rooms on the third floor where the seventh grade was had Coat Rooms. That's

where we put our stuff—even though it was 1967 already, and we should have had hall lockers, like

every other seventh grade in the civilized world.

So I caught Mrs. Baker watching me come out of the Coat Room and walk toward my desk. She

leaned forward, as if she was looking for something in her desk. It was creepy.

But just before I sat down, I figured it out: She'd booby-trapped my desk—like Captain Flint would

have. It all came to me in a sort of vision, the kind of thing that Pastor McClellan sometimes talked

about, how God sends a message to you just before some disaster, and if you listen, you stay alive.

But if you don't, you don't.

I looked at my desk. I didn't see any trip wires, so probably there weren't any explosives. I checked

the screws. They were all still in, so it wouldn't fall flat when I sat down.

Maybe there was something inside. Something terrible inside. Something really awful inside.

Something left over from the eighth-grade biology labs last spring.

I looked at Mrs. Baker again. She had looked away, a half-smile on her lips. Really. Talk about

guilt.

So I asked Meryl Lee Kowalski, who has been in love with me since she first laid eyes on me in

the third grade—I'm just saying what she told me—I asked her to open my desk first.

"How come?" she said. Sometimes even true love can be suspicious.

"Just because."

"'Just because' isn't much of a reason."

"Just because there might be a surprise."

"For who?"

"For you."

"For me?"

"For you."

She lifted the desk top. She looked under
English for You and Me, Mathematics for You and Me,

and
Geography for You and Me.
"I don't see anything," she said.

I looked inside. "Maybe I was wrong."

"Maybe
I
was wrong," said Meryl Lee, and dropped the desk top. Loudly. "Oh," she said. "Sorry. I

was supposed to wait until you put your fingers there."

Love and hate in seventh grade are not far apart, let me tell you.

At lunchtime, I was afraid to go out for recess, since I figured that Mrs. Baker had probably recruited

an eighth grader to do something awful to me. There was Doug Swieteck's brother, for one, who was

already shaving and had been to three police stations in two states and who once spent a night in jail.

No one knew what for, but I thought it might be for something in the Number 390s—or maybe even

Number 410 itself! Doug Swieteck said that if his father hadn't bribed the judge, his brother would

have been on Death Row.

We all believed him.

"Why don't you go out for lunch recess?" said Mrs. Baker to me. "Everyone else is gone."

I held up
English for You and Me.
"I thought I'd read in here," I said.

"Go out for recess," she said, criminal intent gleaming in her eyes.

"I'm comfortable here."

"Mr. Hoodhood," she said. She stood up and crossed her arms, and I realized I was alone in the

room with no witnesses and no mast to climb to get away.

I went out for recess.

I kept a perimeter of about ten feet or so around me, and stayed in Mrs. Sidman's line of sight. I

almost asked for her rain hat. You never know what might come in handy when something awful is

about to happen to you.

Then, as if the Dread Day of Doom and Disaster had come to Camillo Junior High, I heard, "Hey,

Hoodhood!"

It was Doug Swieteck's brother. He entered my perimeter.

I took three steps closer to Mrs. Sidman. She moved away and held her rain hat firmly.

"Hoodhood—you play soccer? We need another guy." Doug Swieteck's brother was moving toward

me. The hair on his chest leaped over the neck of his T-shirt.

"Go ahead," called the helpful Mrs. Sidman from a distance. "If you don't play, someone will have

to sit out."

If I don't play, I'll live another day, I thought.

"Hoodhood," said Doug Swieteck's brother, "you coming or not?"

What could I do? It was like walking into my own destiny.

"You're on that side." He pointed.

I already knew that.

"You're a back," he said.

I knew that, too. Destiny has a way of letting you know these things.

"I'm a forward."

I could have said it for him.

"That means you have to try to stop me."

I nodded.

"Think you can?"

I suppose I could stop you, I thought. I suppose I could stop you with a Bradley tank, armor two

inches thick, three mounted machine guns, and a grenade launcher. Then I suppose I could stop you.

"I can try," I said.

"You can try." Doug Swieteck's brother laughed, and I bet that if I had looked over my shoulder, I

would have seen Mrs. Baker peering out her third-floor classroom window, and she would have been

laughing, too.

But the thing about soccer is that you can run around a whole lot and never, ever touch the ball. And

if you do have to touch the ball, you can kick it away before anyone comes near you. That's what I

figured on doing. Doug Swieteck's brother wouldn't even come near me, and I would foil Mrs.

Baker's nefarious plan.

But Doug Swieteck's brother had clearly received instructions. The first time he got the ball, he

looked around and then came right at me. He wasn't like a normal forward, who everyone knows is

supposed to avoid the defense. He just came right at me, and there was a growl that rose out of him

like he was some great clod of living earth that hadn't evolved out of the Mesozoic Era, howling and

roaring and slobbering and coming to crush me.

I expect that the watching Mrs. Baker was almost giddy at the thought.

"Get in front of him!" screamed Danny Hupfer, who was our goalie. "In front of him!" His voice

was cracking, probably because he was imagining the propulsion of a soccer ball as it left Doug

Swieteck's brother's foot and hurtled toward the goal, and wondering what it might do to his chest.

I didn't move.

Danny screamed again. I think he screamed "In front!" But I'm not sure. I don't think he was using

language at all. Imagine a sound with a whole lot of high vowels, and I think you'd have it.

But it didn't make any difference what he screamed, because of course I wasn't going to get in front.

There was no way in the world I was going to get in front. If Doug Swieteck's brother scored, he

scored. It was just a game, after all.

I stepped toward the sideline, away from the goal.

And Doug Swieteck's brother veered toward me.

I ran back a bit and stepped even closer to the sideline.

And he veered toward me again.

So as Danny Hupfer screamed vowels and Doug Swieteck's brother growled mesozoically, I felt

my life come down to this one hard point, like it had been a funnel channeling everything I had ever

done to this one moment, when it would all end.

And that was when I remembered Jim Hawkins, climbing up the side of the
Hispaniola
to steal her,

tearing down the Jolly Roger flag, sitting in the crosstrees and holding Israel Hands back.