Stand Tall (7 page)

Sully and Eli looked shocked because, first of all, they were seventh-graders, and a seventh-grade boy never sat with an eighth-grade girl. And second of all, Sophie was weird.

Sophie shook her head.

“We’re not crawling with bugs or have purple slime running down our necks.” Tree surprised himself by saying this.

Sophie half smiled. “It was green, the slime I mentioned.”

“Slovik’s got green slime on his neck, but he’s done eating.” Eli punched Tree in the arm. “So, you want to eat with us?”

“Okay, well . . .”

They only had seven minutes before the bell rang, but in that time Sophie told them close to her whole life story.

“Okay, so the last place I lived was in the Bronx—we were there for three years—and then my aunt Peach and my mother decided it was cheaper to live here, so we moved, and we’re all living in an apartment, which is torture, over by the railroad station—me, my mom, my cousin, my aunt, six cats, and my iguana, Lassie. There should be a law that makes trains be quiet so people can get their sleep. When I’m a lawyer—if that’s what I do—I’m either going to be a lawyer or have my own talk show. I haven’t decided. But, one way or the other, I’m going to take care of problems. We don’t know what the future’s going to bring, but I figure law and talk aren’t going away. And I was just born with a big mouth—my aunt Peach tells me that all the time—so I guess I’m going to use it. They named me Sophia because it stands for wisdom. I usually say what people are thinking and don’t have the guts to say.” She took a bite of her sandwich. “This is the worst food of any school I’ve ever been at. We should do something about this. Demand justice. People have more power in this world than they think.”

Tree had never heard anyone talk like this.

Sully and Eli hadn’t, either.

“Okay.” Sophie was moving her head back and forth in a kind of rocking motion, like she was listening to music that only she could hear. “So, here’s how it is. Here’s my motto: Speak your mind and ride a fast horse. There’s just one problem.”

“You don’t have a fast horse,” Tree guessed.

“You got it. What’s your name?”

“Tree. That’s what they call me.”

“What’s your motto?”

Tree thought about that. “I don’t have one.”

“You’ve gotta have a motto.”

Tree looked at Sully and Eli. They didn’t have mottoes, either.

“How do you know what you’re about?” Sophie slurped down the last of her milk.

Tree, Sully, and Eli weren’t sure how to answer.

That’s when the bell rang.

Sully and Eli got up gratefully.

Tree said to Sophie, “I’ll think about it . . . the motto thing. . . .”

“Dad, do you have a motto?” Tree had been thinking about this most of the afternoon.

“Well . . .” Dad looked at the coffee mug he was holding from his store:
Kramer’s Sports Mart: We Will Not Be Undersold.
“I’ve got a slogan, does that count?”

“Not really.”

Curtis and Larry weren’t home to ask.

Grandpa said, “I always liked what the POWs held to. Return with honor.”

“That’s good, Grandpa.”

Tree went into his room, sat at his desk, took out paper and a pen. Wrote the mottoes he knew.

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

The buck stops here.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks
—Tree knew that was a lie; he wasn’t sure if it was a motto.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

That was a decent thought, but it didn’t sound cool like
Speak your mind and ride a fast horse.

Tree tried to edit the words, make them better.

Finally he came up with
Treat people the way you want to be treated.

He wondered if that was good enough to be a motto.

He looked at the
Tyrannosaurus rex
model on his desk. He’d put it together with Grandpa when kids were teasing him about his size in fifth grade. Tree related to dinosaurs, but wasn’t too thrilled about the extinction part.

“They died off because they were too big,” Jeremy Liggins would taunt him. “They died because they were slow and stupid and they needed too much food.”

Tree remembered gluing all the teeth into place, how Grandpa sanded the pieces of the tail when Tree told him what Jeremy had said.

“So, how do you want to be treated?” Grandpa asked.

“Just like I’m regular. Like I’m not so big.”

“The problem is, you’re not a regular size. How do we work around that?”

Tree didn’t know. He just wanted to be regular.

“How about wanting them to treat you with respect, even though your size makes you stand out?”

Tree nodded.

“How are we going to get them to do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think the only way it can happen is if you try to treat them with respect first.” Grandpa fastened the last tail part on with glue, held it down with his thumb.

That wasn’t the easy answer Tree was looking for.

“You’ve got to just think of yourself as a farmer laying down seeds. There might be some storms and weeds that choke what you’re trying to grow. But you’ll get a crop eventually. I guarantee it.”

Tree looked at his motto sheet, underlined
Treat people the way you want to be treated.

He wondered if dinosaurs had mottoes.

Probably
Eat your enemies before they eat you.

“So, I guess people say a lot of stupid things to you about your height.”

Sophie said this to Tree in the hall when he was slurping deep from the drinking fountain. He was so surprised, he half choked. She threw down her flute case and punched him on the back.

“Breathe, or I call 911.”

Tree waved her off, coughing.

“You know why people do that?”

Tree coughed. “Do what?”

“Say stupid things.”

“I’m not sure.”

“My aunt Peach says they say them because they don’t know better, and if they do, it makes them feel like they’ve got one up on you.”

Tree hadn’t thought of it that way.

“So, what do they say?” Sophie was looking up at him.

“They say, ‘How’s the weather up there?’”

“That’s dumb. What do you say?”

“Usually nothing.”

“Spit on them. Say, ‘It’s raining.’”

Tree laughed. “They ask me if I take a lot of vitamins.”

Sophie was shaking her head.

“They ask if my parents are tall, what size my shoes are.”

She looked at his substantial feet. “What size are they?”

“Sixteen double E.”

“So, you’ve got a presence. You show up, people notice.”

Tree smiled. “I guess so.” He liked thinking about it that way.

“There are worse things.” She picked up her case. “I’ve been playing the flute since I was eight. I’m close to being a musical genius except for when I’ve been blowing for an hour and my mouth gets full of spit.”

That’s when Laurie Fuller and Char Wellman, two popular eighth-grade girls, walked up to Sophie, snickering.

“So, did you?” Char asked Sophie, and she and Laurie giggled.

“Did I what?” Sophie held her case tight.

“Fall off a garbage truck?” Laurie asked, and they both exploded in laughter. “Is that how you got here?”

Sophie looked right at them. Tree felt his whole body go stiff.

“I got here in a Chevy,” she said quietly.

The girls ran off, triumphant. The dirty deed done.

Tree stood there, shocked.

“I gotta go,” Sophie whispered.

And she went.

Tree stood in the same place in the hall by the drinking fountain for so long, it seemed like he’d grown roots. He was thinking of all the things he could have said to defend Sophie, but none of them were any good.

He remembered how Jeremy Liggins once said that Tree was “a giant freak that shouldn’t have been born.” Tree knew this wasn’t so. He knew his parents and grandpa loved him. But some words and the way people say them are like grenades exploding on a battlefield.

“Never try to outrun a grenade,” said Grandpa. “Just leap away from it, hit the ground, and pray you’re far enough away.”

VA Rehab, 0800 hours (8:00
A.M.
, military time).

Grandpa came here three times a week to work with Mona.

“I’m just a little concerned, Leo, with you playing Santa Claus this year.”

The Trash King, one of Grandpa’s best friends, said it. He
ran a trash pickup business. They’d served together in Vietnam. He’d driven Leo and Tree here in his truck.

Grandpa cranked hard on the arm machine. He’d been Santa Claus every year at the children’s hospital when the Vietnam Vets Association did their annual show.

“Kids are going to want to crawl on your lap, Leo. You handled it last year, but I knew you were hurting.”

“Santa Claus knows no pain.” Grandpa said it tough; a stab of pain hit his leg.

King studied his old, stubborn friend. “You could branch out. Be an elf.”

“I don’t want to be an elf.”

“You could be a reindeer.”

“Mona,” said Grandpa, “I’ve kicked butt on this machine. Give me something harder.”

She laughed. “Take a break, Leo.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re making me tired.”

Tree laughed, helped Grandpa get off the machine. He didn’t need as much help as last week.

Of all his grandpa’s Vietnam buddies, Tree liked the Trash King best. He worked for him sometimes, moving old, busted furniture like couches, lamps, and tables. King would sell them to “people who had vision.”

“You give me a person with vision,” he’d say, “they can take the most broken-down piece of junk and turn it into something beautiful. They don’t let a few scratches worry them. They see to the heart of the piece.”

Tree pushed the wheelchair in place. Grandpa plopped down, chuckled. “Santa Claus in a wheelchair could start a new trend.”

“You could get hurt, Leo.”

“
Mona
,” Grandpa shouted, “tell this man what disabled people can do.”

Mona Arnold folded her arms, shouted back, “Just about anything.”

Luger, who’d gotten decent at holding a cup, grabbed it with his mechanical hand and raised it high.

King knew when he was outnumbered. “All right, Leo. You’re on deck. But the elves are watching. If you can’t handle it, they’re moving in like Green Berets.”