Stand Tall (5 page)

“When you go there, you can see your reflection in the black stone of the wall,” Tree explained. “It makes us all part of the experience.”

Tree held up a photo of Leo looking sharp in his uniform. “My grandfather served in Vietnam. He was wounded in battle. I asked him what he thought kids should know about the war.”

Tree pressed
PLAY
on the tape recorder. Grandpa’s voice boomed through the classroom.

“The people who went to fight that war, for the most part, did their best to fight an enemy that was harder to figure out and more dangerous than any of us knew. Most of us were kids—nineteen, twenty—I was twenty-five. We thought we’d kick butt and everything would be over fast. We’d win. We didn’t win. I think we stayed too long and made some really bad mistakes. But we did things right, too. I think important things are worth fighting for, but there’s nothing glorious about battle, nothing cool about holding a gun. It’s scary and lonely, and too many people die young. Never be a person who wants war—hate it with everything you’ve got. But if you’ve got to fight to protect people, try to do your job the best you know how. Protecting people is the only reason to ever fight.”

Everyone was quiet after hearing that, even Lucy Pulaski, who had the biggest mouth in the whole seventh grade.

Tree forgot the quote he was going to use at the end. So he just said, “That’s my report.”

Mr. Pender led the applause.

Sully whistled loud and Mr. Pender glared at him, but he kept clapping.

Jeremy Liggins yawned and stretched.

Tree sat back in his seat, shaking from the stress.

Glad it was over, proud he’d stood the test.

A

Fat and red. It sat there on Mr. Pender’s evaluation sheet of Tree’s report.

Tree felt like shouting.

Then the VA said Grandpa could come home on Friday.

What a great week.

Tree was going to make this the best homecoming ever for a Vietnam vet. Grandpa said he hadn’t felt too welcome when he got back from the war.

“I was at the train station in my wheelchair, wearing my uniform,” Grandpa had told him. “A woman stormed up to me and said, ‘Was it worth it?’ I didn’t know what to say. She kept shouting that Vietnam was an unjust war; we had no business being there. She walked away like I smelled bad. I had plenty of friends who served and some who went to Canada to avoid the draft. But I’ve just learned to throw the circuit breaker on all that. Let the whole mess go dark.”

Tree tucked his right knee back and hopped through Dad’s kitchen as Bradley followed, confused. He was remembering what Mona Arnold had told him.

“Think about everything you do each day, and then think about doing it with a disability.”

It was hard to hop in the house without falling.

Sully was at the dining room table, researching sedimentary rocks on the computer for their earth science report. Sully looked up. “What are you doing?”

Tree made it to a chair, eased himself down like Mona Arnold was teaching Grandpa to do.

“Butt down and slide,” she instructed.

Butt sliding was a big part of rehab.

“That’s what my grandpa’s got to do when he gets home, Sully.”

Sully nodded. He didn’t know what it was like to have half
a leg, but he knew what it was like to have bad hearing. You have to try harder to understand what people are saying; watch what they do, not just what they say. Sully adjusted his hearing aid.

Tree looked around the room, thinking.

Homecomings should be fun.

He saw it in his mind. The best ideas are simple.

He grabbed a piece of paper, drew a clothesline on a pulley hung from the kitchen to the living room. A big basket suspended from the line, delivering food to wherever his grandpa was sitting.

Sully glared at the computer screen. “Who cares if sediment is mechanical, chemical, or organic? Knowing this will not help us later in life.”

“Unless we drill for oil. I’ll be right back.”

Tree raced through the kitchen, into the garage, past the bikes and the lawn mower, past the old Chinese gong that used to hang on the back porch. His mother would ram it with a mallet to call him and his brothers in for dinner.

That sound shook the neighborhood.

It was out of commission now, like a warship in dry dock.

On a shelf he found a pulley, an old clothesline.

He grabbed his tool kit, too, ran back inside. Lugged forty feet of line past Sully, who shouted, “
What
are you doing?”

Tree was on a step stool, pulling rope through the pulley, when Dad came home with Chinese food.

“I can explain,” Tree said. He and Sully tugged on the rope to make sure it was tight.

“Good.” Dad stared at the clothesline stretched from kitchen to dining room.

“Dad, do we need the hanging lamp in the living room?”

“I’m kind of fond of it.” Dad speared a dumpling with a chopstick.

“Can I just try something?”

“You should let him, Mr. Benton. This is more educational than homework.”

Dad raised an eyebrow.

Tree took the hanging lamp off the hook, handed it down.

He fastened the pulley to the hook. Checked the weight, balance. “Grandpa won’t be able to reach it here. It’s got to be lower. Untie the rope, Dad.”

Dad walked over, chewing, untied it.

“If I bolt it on the beam, Dad, it will be steady. Okay?”

Dad laughed. “I’m a sport.”

“This is going to be so cool, Mr. Benton.”

Bolt screwed in, pulley and rope adjusted.

Dad watched, smiling.

Tree ran to the kitchen, stuck a package of Mallomars in a basket, clamped the basket on the rope.

“This is how we can deliver food to Grandpa when he gets home, Dad.”

Swoosh.

Tree pulled the rope through the pulley. The basket made a low loop in the dining room—he’d have to fix that—Bradley tucked his tail low and slinked away. The basket stopped right over the couch.

Bradley barked.

Tree beamed.

Dad grabbed it, laughing. “Terrific!”

Sully gazed respectfully at the invention. “My mother would croak if we tried that at my house.”

Tree and Dad nodded.

Occasionally something awful, like divorce, can have a good side.

It was late. Dad was asleep.

Tree stood in the driveway in front of the basketball hoop. The air was cold; his breath rose like steam.

He bounced the ball.

Tried to rise up on his toes like Curtis taught him.

Took a shot.

Missed.

Another.

Almost.

He dribbled the ball up and down the driveway.

The neighbors couldn’t see how bad he was at night.

He wasn’t graceful like Curtis, who could dribble a ball past anyone to make the basket.

He wasn’t easy with himself like Larry, who could pick up a bat and hit a home run on the first pitch.

He wondered why he was not like his brothers.

Curtis and Larry were coming home on Friday, too.

Curtis took time to do things with Tree. They’d play basketball together. And unlike his coaches, who always told Tree
what he was doing wrong, Curtis shouted out what he was doing right.

“Good move on the hands.”

“Good bounce on the ball.”

“Good focus, you almost had that basket.”

Larry was a pain. “Giant tree sloth,” that’s what he called Tree.

Tree tried to take the insult apart, find the good.
Giant
he could live with, but
sloth
didn’t have an upside.

He got out the can of deicer, sprayed the front steps, watched the ice evaporate. The ice had to be gone so Grandpa wouldn’t fall when he came home.

He wondered if deicer would work on Larry.

Then he remembered.

Everyone was coming home, but he was supposed to stay at his mom’s next week.

Curtis and Larry got to stay at Dad’s for their whole winter break. Mom was supposed to turn her attic into a bedroom for them, but she couldn’t yet. Money was tight.

Tree threw the can down.

He
had
to be there when Grandpa and his brothers came home.

Tree’s mother . . .

In workout clothes.

At the kitchen counter.

Typing on her laptop computer while studying fabric swatches for the couch.

Looking up occasionally to make eye contact with Tree.

Uttered the Big Question: “Honey, what would you like most to happen on Christmas Day?”

What Tree wanted most was for it to be the way it had always been.

He didn’t know how to say that.

The Christmas Schedule: “Your dad and I have worked it out. You and your brothers are going to be there for Christmas Eve, and then early in the morning he’ll bring you all over here.”

There and here.

It sounded so easy when she said it.

“I’m going to make apple, pecan, and pumpkin pies and
roast beef and get those dinner rolls you like. The tree will be up and it’s going to be okay, honey. It’s going to be fine.”

Tree looked down.

He wasn’t sure about
fine.
He knew it was going to be different.

A blur of memories flooded Tree:

Grandpa’s Christmas lights strung around his house in Baltimore—the house looked like Santa Claus himself lived inside.

The blinking sign on the roof—MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

The crowds walking by.

Bradley’s reindeer outfit that one year.
Bad
idea.

The Christmas the stove broke and they had to eat at that all-you-can-eat buffet.

The Christmas Larry threw up on their grandmother’s lace tablecloth and they finally figured out he was allergic to turkey.

The Christmas Mom broke her leg and lay on the couch, shouting instructions for
where
each ornament was to be hung properly on the tree.

Mom had stopped typing. “If I could, honey, I would fast-forward us all to a few years down the road when we’ll be more comfortable with this, even though I’d be older.” She laughed, looked at the fabric swatches on her lap. “Green, I think. Stripes get tired.”

Tree didn’t understand how stripes could get tired.

His mother used mysterious words when she decorated.

“Curtis and Larry are coming home on Friday,” he said.

She smiled. “I know.” She was clipping coupons now.

“Grandpa’s coming home then, too.”

She looked up. “So soon?”

Big breath. “And, Mom, you know, I promised I’d help when Grandpa got home. He’s going to need a lot of help.”

She knew that. She loved Leo, too.

“It’s not that I don’t want to be here.” He looked down; didn’t like lying.

“It’s just that you want to be
there
,” she said flatly.

She wished she hadn’t said it that way.

“I’ll come visit, Mom. I promise.”

She threw down the coupons. “I don’t
ever
want you to feel like you’re just visiting me. I’m doing everything I can to make this house our home.”

Tree looked at the freshly painted light green walls.

The yellow curtains at the windows.

The scented dried flowers that would make his father sneeze.