The Boy from Left Field

The Boy From Left Field

Tom Henighan

For Cathy and Marilyn, and all the kids they inspired — and who inspired them — in the unforgettable “Room 27”

The children run so fast.

They want to beat the throw

of time and trouble.

They want to touch home plate,

even sliding.

And sometimes fate lies low

and time’s in hiding —

then the winning run is sweet,

as children know,

even sliding.

Home in a Taxi

Once upon a time, not very long ago, a boy named Hawk lived with his mother in a taxicab on a grey and grim street in Toronto, just east of the Don River.

If you don’t know Toronto, let me tell you that the Don flows through the eastern part of the city and into Lake Ontario. It rolls through a valley once used up and worn out by generations of people too busy working for a living to bother with clean water, noble trees, or rolling green fields.

The valley is greener now and the river, once horribly polluted, is beginning to look like a river again. Just east of its still-murky waters, however, some poor neighbourhoods hang on and shelter people who can’t afford the fine houses that lie north, around the fine old avenue called the Danforth.

The taxicab Hawk and his mother called home didn’t zip around the city picking up passengers. It was a huge 1980s Oldsmobile station wagon, and it had seen better days. Once loaded with features, the car was a wreck. Its body was half rusted out, the engine had been stripped of everything valuable, the fake leather seats were full of holes, and you could see the patchy ground through the rotted metal floor.

This relic sat in a big, dusty yard surrounded by crumbling brick warehouses and next to some hunks of rusting machinery. A couple of Dumpsters parked beside the road enclosed the space and made it almost private.

A few feet from the car was the back of an old brick building, still in use. If you walked through the door and into the dark hallway you could smell curry, sweet spices, scents of tea and baked nan. There was an Indian restaurant facing out on the next street, and it was very much alive and popular, not only with the neighbourhood people, but with residents for miles around. The owner, whose name was Selim, took pity on Hawk and his mother, and let them live in his back lot and use the washrooms and some of the facilities of the restaurant. He sent out an occasional bowl of rice, some leftover pakoras, or even a delicious sweet, like Gulab Jamun, when he thought they might be short of food.

Hawk was ten years old and should have been in school, but his mother was having a fight with his teacher, and refused to let him go anywhere near his grade four class. Hawk’s mother, who had decided on her own account that she was a Native person, called herself Storm Cloud, which was an appropriate name for a woman who raised a fuss about everything and caused trouble in order to get what she wanted, even when she didn’t have to.

One rainy morning in May, when Hawk was getting bored with his street life and the cramped taxi, he decided that he wanted to go back to school.

He ran around the old car, jumping over puddles and waving his arms and shouting, “Look, Ma, it’s a terrible day. I can’t play stickball with Mr. Rizzuto, and there’s no point in going to the park. At school I could at least read a book.”

His mother, who was busy in the front seat, making one of the Native crafts that she sold up on the Danforth, leaned out of the front window and wagged a finger at her son.

“Don’t you think I want you in school? It’s that terrible teacher — she doesn’t appreciate you at all. She doesn’t know how smart you are. She thinks you’re just a useless street kid and have no manners. As if I didn’t teach you myself! Besides, she doesn’t respect our Native customs.”

Hawk stopped in his tracks, poised over an oily puddle. A slender boy, of average height, but wiry and strong, he fingered his long ponytail of blond hair and stared at his mother with his deep blue eyes. With his blandest, most innocent smile, he informed her, “Mrs. MacWhinney says you’re not a Native at all, Ma. I heard her talking to another teacher. She says you’re deluded. That you ought to be locked up. She says you’re a pain in the neck.”

His mother took the bait at once. She gave a yelp, as if someone had slapped her, and started screaming. “That plumped-up pea goose! That played-out pea-brained word-drudge! I’ll have the old piss-pot fired! I’ll push her off a high bridge. And I’ll tell her so to her face — tomorrow morning!”

Mrs. Wilson — for although she called herself Storm Cloud, Hawk’s mother’s real name was Ruby Wilson — jumped out of the car, slapped at her buckskin skirt, and gave a pretty good imitation of a war cry.

“She’ll take you back and treat you properly, or I’ll know the reason why!” declared his mother. “The School Board respects me. They don’t treat me like dirt. We’ve got tests to prove how smart you are. You didn’t get all that from your father. You watch, you’ll be back in class any time you want to be.”

“And you won’t pull me out of class if Mrs. MacWhinney treats me wrong? You’ll let me fight my own battles?”

His mother gave him a sharp look and shook her head.

“I’m your mother,” she reminded him. “I have a right to interfere any time I want. And it’s not interference. It’s just looking after your rights.”

Hawk sighed and threw a stone rather hard into a puddle. Mrs. MacWhinney, his teacher, was an ex-librarian, and spent many days praising the virtues of good books, although she never once read her class a story. A sallow-faced woman with thin, gold-rimmed glasses and dark, empty eyes, she had a cultivated voice and prided herself on being a PhD graduate of some big western university. Maybe because of that she talked a lot, obviously enjoying the sound of her own voice. She didn’t much like to be interrupted either. Now Hawk was imagining the terrific shouting match that would take place when his mother hauled him back to the school and she and his teacher began to up the ante with each other. The windows would rattle, the roof would shake, it would be embarrassing as hell. All the kids would giggle behind their hands and stare. They’d whisper, make fun of him, calling him names, and chase him around the playground later, and the teacher would feel justified and totally virtuous when she treated him in an even snootier way than before.

Mrs. MacWhinney obviously didn’t believe the test results that showed that Hawk was quite a smart kid, smart enough even to get into the gifted class. Several times she had handed back his written work with a sour smile and called his attention to the large letter
P
that was written across the top of the first sheet.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” she asked, pointing to her scrawl.

“
P
for perfect?” he beamed at her.

“Certainly not! It’s a letter I reserve for very doubtful cases. For children who do POOR work and are a PROBLEM. It’s a warning, it’s the handwriting on the wall, telling a student that he or she simply MUST improve.”

The first time she told him this, Hawk had simply shrugged his shoulders. The second time he said to her, “That work is much better than last time. Maybe the
P
should be smaller.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she snapped.

“That’s the problem,” he complained, and was immediately sent off to the principal’s office for being insolent.

Storm Cloud had hurried over to the school. She shook her head disapprovingly at Hawk, but demanded that the principal move her son to the Gifted Grade Four.

The principal, a well-dressed woman with perfect makeup and an artificial smile to match, leaned across her desk.

“But your son can’t write two coherent sentences,” she explained. “He can’t spell, and he never finishes his work. And when he gets frustrated he throws things on the floor and then spits at the other students if they laugh at him.”

“He’s essentially verbal, that’s why,” his mother insisted. “It’s part of our heritage, a tribal kind of thing. That teacher of yours should teach him to write! Or doesn’t she know how? And, besides, when he seems to be spitting he’s really just sharing his spiritual essence with the other children. It’s a part of our culture you don’t understand.”

“For your information, Mrs. Wilson, I’ve always gotten high ratings in my ‘sensitivity to minorities’ scores. You may be sure that your son will receive fair treatment under this roof. I’m just trying to get your co-operation as we plan his future together.”

“Watch out, Mum, the white lady wants you to sign a treaty,” Hawk had joked, not very appropriately, perhaps. He was banished from the discussion then and there.

His memories of school, as you see, were not so great, but as he stomped around the vacant lot in the rain, circling the Oldsmobile and his mother, splashing in the puddles and throwing stones at the old tires and the hulking machinery, he still had a kind of itch to get back to that horrible class.

After all, despite the teacher’s endless
P
ratings, he knew he was learning a few things, at least from the other students. There were books to read and kids who didn’t always make fun of him, and who had neat things like iPods and cellphones with cameras and games and keyboards that they would sometimes let him try out.

Hawk jumped across a very large puddle and approached his mother, who had been thinking deep thoughts while he roamed through the back lot remembering some of his worst school moments.

Storm Cloud smiled at him, stepped over to the Oldsmobile, swung open one rusting door, picked up the tiny moccasins she’d been fashioning out of leather and fur and stowed them in a small box in front of the back seat. Then she took Hawk by the hand and led him slowly across the yard.

“I’ve got a plan,” she said. “One that will solve most of our problems, I hope. I’m going to get you transferred to the gifted class.”

“Mum, you must have been dreaming in Technicolor,” he told her. “You already know that won’t wash.”

“Don’t doubt me, son. I know what I’m doing. I want you to go over to Mr. Rizzuto’s store — I don’t care if it’s raining — he’s always happy to talk baseball, and he’ll be glad to see you. Meanwhile, I’ll just drop in on your father and the two of us will head over to the board and arrange for your transfer. It might take a few days, but it will be worth waiting for. I’ve heard about a couple of great teachers who might just be the ones to teach you properly and get you settled into school at last. That’s what we want, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“All right then. Let’s lock up the car and get going. I can finish my work later. You okay walking to Rizzuto’s without me?”

“Yeah, sure, Mum.”

“All right, but you keep out of sight of that Rippers gang. They don’t only prowl by night, you know. You remember how upset you were when they attacked you and stole your hat and baseball glove and ball on your way back from Mr. Rizzuto’s store last month?”

Hawk winced, frowned, and bit his lip. “How could I forget it?”

His mother gave him a hug, pressing him close.

“Sorry, dear, to mention it, but it’s a wonder they didn’t murder you! The police never did a thing either. Too busy protecting rich white guys, I guess. Watch out for that gang, son, and don’t talk to any strangers.”

A few minutes later Hawk was walking down to the end of Hilbert Street, the street he and his mother called home, toward one of the busy thoroughfares that connected the north and south areas of the neighbourhood known as Riverdale.

He’d hated to be reminded by his mother of his stolen ball, cap, and first baseman’s glove. It was a perfect one, that glove, almost broken in, and complete with the great Justin Morneau’s signature stamped on it. It had been a present from his father, and after he practised awhile with that beauty, he was sure he’d make one of the neighbourhood teams, and maybe even play in the Little League. But now he knew he’d never see that glove again.

Silently, he cursed the gang that had ruined his future. The Rippers, they called themselves, and with good reason, for they were a street clan that specialized in harassing and fleecing younger kids. They liked to stalk ten- to twelve-year-olds — whom they’d threaten or even beat up, and then steal their techno-toys and sports equipment. The Rippers weren’t choosy. They loved money, but depending on the quality of the merchandise, they were happy to steal almost anything, from iPods and watches to running shoes and Swiss Army knives.

Hawk shuddered and looked nervously around as he walked, for in his mind he could still see the gang’s sneering faces. Haggard-looking and mean they were, those kids, a smelly, scary bunch who didn’t care whether their victims were white, black, Native, or Asian, so long as the haul was worth the risk of getting nicked by the cops.

One of the gang he remembered most clearly was a boy they called Ringo — a short, nasty teen with a head like a turnip, all shaved, and wearing sunglasses taped on at the ears. A kid with thick arms covered with tattoos, Ringo had a soft, cooing voice that Hawk found disturbing. He had slipped Hawk’s treasured glove out of his hand, stroked the leather gently and smiled at him, then suddenly shoved the glove as hard as he could into Hawk’s face. So, with a burgeoning black eye and without his precious glove, Hawk had crept back home. After that, he’d had a few nightmares about Ringo.

But just then, looking around in every direction, he couldn’t see any sign of that nasty gang, so he walked on bravely, heading straight for Mr. Rizzuto’s store as his mother had told him to do.