The Boy Who Lost His Face (2 page)

Little did he know that someday his face would be hanging on her living room wall.

He ran toward the gate, which was now closed.

R
OGER WAS
limping around on the snake-head cane. “Would you boys like some lemonade?” he asked in a crotchety old voice that sounded nothing like Mrs. Bayfield.

Scott and Randy laughed.

David hurried up behind them. “Whew,” he said. “We did it!”

“All right!” said Randy. He held up his hand for David to slap.

David slapped at it but almost missed. Only his last two fingers hit Randy’s hand. He’d never been very comfortable with high-fives.

“There are some cups on the porch, if you would be so kind,” whined Roger. “I’d get them myself, but I’m too ugly!”

Randy and Scott laughed.

David smiled. “Well, I gotta go,” he said with a half-shrug, half-wave. “Homework.”

“Later,” said Randy.

“Yeah, see ya, Ballinger,” said Scott. For the last week or so Scott had only called David by his last name.

“Simpson,” he replied.

David walked home feeling miserable. He felt worried, too. What if she called the police?

Well, at least he wasn’t the one who pulled her rocking chair over. He didn’t pour lemonade on her head. He didn’t step on her flowers or break her window. He didn’t steal her cane.

All he did was flip her off.

Really, when you think about it, what’s so wrong with that? All he did was point his middle finger at her. What makes the middle finger any worse than any other finger? What if he had just pointed his pinky at her? That wouldn’t have been a bad thing to do, would it?

As far as he could remember, he’d never given anyone the finger before, at least not for real. He remembered when he first learned about it in the third grade. He and Scott used to practice giving it to each other. It took a lot of practice to be able to do it quickly. They’d flip each other off all day in class, but only in fun. It was kind of like a game of tag. They’d pretend to scratch their nose, or the back of their neck, but they’d always be pointing their middle fingers at each other.

It was too bad that Scott had become friends with Roger and Randy. Actually Randy wasn’t so bad. He would probably be a good guy, thought David, if it wasn’t for Roger.

But he knew the reason he had given Mrs. Bayfield the finger was to try to impress Roger. What do I care what Roger thinks? he asked himself. Except he did care, and he knew it.

“Hi, David!” his brother greeted him when he got home.

“Hi, Rick,” he muttered.

“You want to play a game or something?” Ricky asked.

“I got homework,” said David. “I have to memorize the Gettysburg Address.”

“We could just throw the ball around,” suggested Ricky.

David smiled. “Sure. Okay.”

Ricky’s face lit up.

They threw the baseball back and forth in the backyard. In a way David felt like he was doing a good deed to make up for the bad deed he had done earlier. He knew how much Ricky looked up to him.

Ricky was in the fifth grade. Anything David did, Ricky wanted to do too. There was never an argument about what to watch on TV. Ricky wanted to watch whatever David wanted to watch. When David mentioned he liked a song on the radio, Ricky would go out and buy the record, saying it was by his favorite group. If David told Ricky a joke, he’d hear Ricky repeat it to his friends the next day, even if it wasn’t all that funny.

David caught the ball and threw it back to his brother, who was using David’s old baseball glove. David had given it to him at the end of last season. Ricky could hardly believe it. “Wow, this is the same glove you made that famous catch with,” he had said. David didn’t know what Ricky was talking about. “You know. Remember when you caught that hot smash and stepped on second base for a double play?”

David had played second base. He was okay, but to hear Ricky tell it, he was a superstar. “They should put
you
at shortstop instead of Scott,” Ricky said.

Scott always seemed to be a little better than David at everything. Even his grades were better. That was something David couldn’t understand. How could someone as smart as Scott get along so well with idiots like Roger and Randy?

He threw the ball back to his brother. He wondered what Ricky would think of him if he knew what his life was really like. That he hung around with guys who didn’t especially like him. That he helped steal a cane from a defenseless old lady.

What if she is still lying helplessly on the ground? What if she can’t walk at all without her cane?

He imagined her having to drag herself across the overgrown yard, up the wooden stairs to the porch, and into the house. And Roger broke her front window, so all over the floor there would probably be broken glass that she’d have to crawl across. The glass pitcher probably broke, too. She could be bleeding to death at this very moment.

He tried not to think about it as he threw the ball back to Ricky.

She probably doesn’t have any family or friends, he thought. She was so happy to see us, delighted to have some visitors.

Or what if she does have a family? Will she be able to tell them what happened? Or will she just clean herself up and say nothing to anyone, because it’s too humiliating? Maybe just pretend it never happened. “How did you break the window?” her son might ask.
“Oh, you know clumsy old me,” she’d answer, not wanting to talk about it.

David almost felt like crying. What if some kids did that to his own grandmother? Or to his mother, when she got old? Or to Elizabeth?

Elizabeth was his baby sister, who just had her first birthday.

Mrs. Bayfield was once one year old. She was once a cute baby girl whom everybody loved. Who would have thought then that someday she’d be a crippled, lonely old lady and some kids would knock her chair over, pour lemonade on her head, and steal her cane?

And then when she’s lying helplessly on the ground, humiliated, unable to walk, without a friend in the world, some stupid kid flips her off.

He threw the ball hard, too hard, to his brother. He hadn’t meant to throw it that hard.

Ricky caught it and beamed. “Nice throw!”

David sighed as he considered going back to see her. He wanted to make sure she was all right. Maybe he could even be her friend. At least tell her he was sorry.

He wanted to go back, but he didn’t.

What if Roger or Randy found out? He’d be the joke of the school. Besides, the police might be there waiting for him.
The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime
.

Ricky threw the ball as hard as he could. David had to jump and catch it backhanded. “Great catch!” said Ricky.

David started to throw the ball back to Ricky, but
for a split second, instead of seeing his brother he saw the image of Mrs. Bayfield tipped over in her rocking chair with her legs up in the air and her black-and-white-striped underwear with red ruffles.

The ball sailed high over his brother’s head and way off to the left.

It shattered their parents’ bedroom window.

E
LIZABETH
said “ball.”

It actually sounded more like “baw,” but her mother knew what she meant. That was the reason David and Ricky didn’t get in trouble for breaking the window.

Elizabeth and her mother were sitting on the bedroom floor at the foot of the bed, reading Elizabeth’s favorite book.

“Gaboo!” said Elizabeth, her finger on the picture of the caboose.

At that moment the ball came crashing through the window, bounced and rolled across the bed, bounced on the floor, and landed in Elizabeth’s lap.

“Baw,” said Elizabeth as if it were a very common thing for a baseball to suddenly crash through the window and land in her lap. She picked it up and showed it to her mother.

It all happened so fast that by the time Mrs. Ballinger realized what had happened it was already clear
that the danger was past and nobody was hurt. She just laughed.

“It was my fault,” said David, rushing into the room.

“I should have caught it,” said Ricky, right beside him.

“You couldn’t have caught that ball,” said David.

“I could too,” said Ricky.

Their mother and Elizabeth were laughing at each other.

“It’s my fault,” David repeated. “I’m the one who should get in trouble.”

“No one is in trouble,” their mother said. “Both of you please clean it up while I hold Elizabeth.”

“But Elizabeth could have been hurt,” said David.

His mother looked him right in the eye and said, “Yes, I know.”

The broken glass was confined to the bed. David and Ricky folded up the ends of the bedspread.

Their mother read to Elizabeth, “Mr. Goose and Mr. Duck went for a ride on the green dump truck.”

“Dum tugg!” said Elizabeth.

They lifted the bedspread off the bed.

“C’mon, Mr. Duck,” said David.

“Okay, Mr. Goose,” said Ricky.

I
T DIDN’T
seem right.

I should have gotten in trouble, David thought. It was my fault. I broke the window. And Elizabeth could have gotten hurt. What if the ball hit her on the head or a piece of glass got in her eye?

Besides, what kind of lesson was that for Ricky? He has to learn responsibility. If you do something wrong, even if it’s not on purpose, you still have to suffer the consequences.

I should have been punished, he thought.

S
INCE THE
second grade David had stopped by Scott’s house every morning on the way to school.

Scott’s mother answered the door with a cup of coffee in one hand and half a croissant hanging from her mouth. She looked at David like she was surprised to see him.

She pulled the croissant from her mouth. “Scott’s already left, Davey,” she said. “I assumed you were with him.”

David shrugged. “No big deal,” he said. Then, “Oh, that’s right!” as if he suddenly remembered something. “Scott had something he had to do this morning.”

Scott’s mother had the coffee cup to her lips, and he walked away quickly before she had time to ask him anything more about what Scott had to do this morning. For some reason he felt embarrassed in front of her, that her son hadn’t waited for him.

“Bye, Davey!” she called after him.

He waved with his back to her.

They had been Davey and Scotty until the fifth grade; then they became Dave and Scott. But Scott’s mother still called him Davey. He called her Sally.

Once, when he was in the third grade, they had
spent half an hour crying in each other’s arms after they had seen a dog get run over by a jeep.

It was kind of funny, he thought now as he walked away, that he called Scott’s mother Sally but Scott he called Simpson.

When he got to school he saw Scott and Randy standing on either side of the door to the boys’ bathroom. He headed toward them unsure if he was their friend, but they were right on the way to his locker and he didn’t think he should have to go out of the way just to avoid them. Besides, he had helped them steal the cane. That proved he was their friend.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hey, Dave, how ya doin’?” asked Randy.

“Ballinger,” muttered Scott.

“Simpson,” said David.

“So what was it that she said to you after you gave her the bird?” asked Randy.

“The bird?” asked David.

“You know,” said Randy. Then, smiling, he gave David the finger.

David had never heard it called the bird before. “I don’t know,” he said. “She was just babbling. I mean, she could hardly talk with lemonade coming out of her nose.” He laughed.

Neither Scott nor Randy laughed.

“I don’t know, man,” said Randy. “It sounded like she put a curse on you.”

David smiled. “Yeah, right,” he said.

A boy with long sloppy hair and blue sunglasses approached the bathroom door.

Scott and Randy immediately blocked his path. “Bathroom’s closed,” said Scott.

The boy stood there a moment. David recognized him from Spanish class. His name was Larry Clarksdale. He had only been at the school a few weeks.

Larry chuckled as if it were some kind of a joke. “C’mon, let me through,” he said.

Scott and Randy didn’t budge.

“Can’t you read the sign on the door?” asked Randy.

There was no sign on the door.

“It says, ‘Closed for Repairs,’ ” said Scott.

Larry looked at David, or at least David thought he was looking at him. It was hard to tell where Larry was looking behind his blue sunglasses.

David shrugged.

Larry also shrugged, then turned and walked away, slowly at first, then very quickly.

Randy snickered.

“Go use the girls’ bathroom, pervert!” Scott shouted after him.

A moment later Roger stepped out of the bathroom. He laughed when he saw David.

David couldn’t tell if Roger was laughing at him or with him. He smiled.

“So, David, you want a smoke?” asked Randy. “We’ll stand guard.”

For a split second David actually considered it. “Uh, no, thanks,” he said. “Maybe later.”

He saw the look of disapproval on Scott’s face.

“What’d old Buttfield call you?” asked Roger. “A pimple-banger?”

“I don’t know,” David said with a shrug. “I gave her the bird,” he added, trying to sound tough.

“Big deal,” scoffed Roger. “She probably doesn’t even know what it means!”

Randy and Scott laughed.

So did David, for lack of anything else to do.

D
AVID’S HOMEROOM
was a combination social studies and English class. He tried to put everything but the Gettysburg Address out of his mind as he looked it over one last time. Ricky had helped him memorize it. Ricky had been very impressed that David could memorize all those big words. But the big words were easy. It was the little words that were hard; all the “to’s” and “for’s” and “a’s” and “the’s.”

Roger’s voice suddenly popped into his head.
Big deal
, he had said.
She probably doesn’t even know what it means
!

Roger had meant it as a put-down, but now as David thought about it, it made him feel better.