The Boy Who Lost His Face (3 page)

Maybe Mrs. Bayfield didn’t know what it meant! If she didn’t know what it meant, then it wasn’t a bad thing for him to do. It would be no different than if he had pointed his elbow at her.

He wondered how long people had been giving the finger. Maybe they’d only been doing it a few years.

Who made it up? he wondered. Who decided it was a bad thing to do, and how did so many people find out about it?

He wondered if his parents knew what it meant. Maybe his father, he decided, but definitely not his
mother. How could she? Somebody would have had to show it to her and tell her what it meant, and he couldn’t imagine that. And if his mother didn’t know what it meant, then Mrs. Bayfield probably didn’t either.

“Miss Williams,” said Mr. MacFarland.

David felt a pang, just as if Mr. MacFarland had said “Mr. Ballinger.”

“Are you prepared to recite the Gettysburg Address?” asked Mr. MacFarland.

“Except for the hat,” said Miss Williams.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Nothing.”

A lot of the kids thought Miss Williams was spacey, but David knew what she meant. She was making a joke. It was like she needed to wear a stovepipe hat in order to recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

She stood up. “Should I say it here, or do you want me to go to the front of the room?”

“Wherever you feel most comfortable, Miss Williams,” said Mr. MacFarland.

Miss Williams remained at her desk, standing very straight. She had long red hair, bright green eyes, and, thought David, just the right number of freckles.

He didn’t know how many freckles she had, but he knew it was just the right amount. He sometimes daydreamed about sitting beside her in a beautiful meadow and just counting her freckles.

He was glad that Mr. MacFarland had called on her, so he could stare at her without having to worry
about being caught. He sat two rows to the left of her and one row back. If the classroom was a chessboard, he was a knight’s move away from her. If she was a queen and he was a knight, he could take her off on his next move.

She took a deep breath and began: “Fourscore and seven years ago our—”

“Stop!” commanded Mr. MacFarland.

She stared bravely at the teacher.

“Miss Williams, do you know what ‘Fourscore and seven years ago’ means?” he asked her.

“No,” she said very quietly.

“No,” he repeated. “Tell me this. How long did it take you to memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address?”

“I don’t know, about an hour.”

“You mean to tell me that you spent all that time saying the words, over and over again, and you don’t even know what they mean. Are you a robot?”

She pushed out one side of her face with her tongue.

“Do you own a dictionary, Miss Williams?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t it ever occur to you to look up the words in the dictionary?”

“I know what they mean separately,” she said. “Just not together.”

Mr. MacFarland turned toward the rest of the class. “Will someone please tell Miss Williams what the words mean
together.
”

Several kids raised their hands. David didn’t. He knew what “fourscore and seven” meant, but he wasn’t about to show her up.

“Mr. Schwartz.”

Jeremy Schwartz explained that a score was twenty, so that fourscore and seven equaled eighty-seven.

“Thank you,” said Mr. MacFarland. “Now tell us, Mr. Schwartz, why didn’t Lincoln just say eighty-seven? Why did he have to make it so complicated?”

“Maybe that’s just how people talked back then.”

“No, people said eighty-seven, just as they do today.” He turned back to Miss Williams, who was still standing. “Miss Williams, why do you think he said fourscore and seven instead of eighty-seven?”

“Because it sounds good,” she said meekly.

“Because it sounds good?” Mr. MacFarland repeated. Several kids snickered. “What do you mean, it
sounds
good.”

“It sort of rhymes.”

There were more snickers. David could hardly watch. He hated to see her ridiculed in front of the whole class.

“Do you mean to say,” continued Mr. MacFarland, “that on the site of the bloodiest battlefield in the Civil War, where there were more than forty thousand casualties, where brothers killed brothers, President Lincoln chose those words because they
rhymed
?”

Miss William’s face quivered.

Mr. MacFarland smiled. “Well, you’re absolutely correct,” he said.

David smiled.

“The Gettysburg Address is more than just a speech,” Mr. MacFarland told the class. “It is a piece
of literature. It is a poem honoring the forty thousand young men killed or wounded. Mr. Lincoln came to that horrible site and spoke with dignity and grace. And now, Miss Williams, I’d like you to do the same. Recite the Gettysburg Address, but don’t just say the words.
Feel
them. Imagine you’re standing on that battlefield and speak with the dignity and grace befitting the occasion.” He smiled at her. “And you don’t even need a hat.”

Miss Williams smiled sheepishly. Then with her head held high and her green eyes flashing she spoke. “Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing …”

David closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and listened to her clear, brave voice.

“… We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we do this.”

He opened his eyes to look at her again, but for a split second instead of Miss Williams he saw the face of Felicia Bayfield.

He toppled over in his chair.

Miss Williams stopped reciting. Several kids were laughing.

“Stay where you are, Mr. Ballinger,” ordered Mr. MacFarland.

“Huh?”

“Maybe this will teach you to sit like a human being. Please continue, Miss Williams.”

David felt like a bug as he lay on his back with his legs in the air while Miss Williams continued to recite.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who …”

David wondered if Mr. MacFarland knew what it meant to give someone the finger. He wondered if President Lincoln ever flipped anyone off.

“… that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

A
T RECESS
David hung out with Scott, Roger, Randy, and some other kids, including two girls—Leslie Gilroy and Ginger Rice. Even though he was just barely part of the group, it still felt good to be hanging out with the two most popular girls in the school. He sat on the edge of a planter with a fake smile plastered across his face.

Roger told the others how they had swiped Mrs. Bayfield’s snake cane.

“Her name’s Felicia!” said Scott. “Can you believe it? Felicia?”

They all laughed.

“Don’t get too close to David,” warned Roger. “She put a curse on him.”

“Really, David?” asked Ginger.

David smiled. “That’s right,” he said, trying to sound mysterious. “I’m cursed.”

“Yuck,” said Ginger.

After recess David had science. Science and math were his two best subjects. His father was a scientist. After science was shop.

Randy was in his shop class. David waved and said hi to him as he walked past Randy’s worktable.

Randy waved back and loudly called, “Hi, Dave!”

Another boy named Alvin whispered something to Randy, then they both laughed.

David continued on toward his table at the other side of the room.

At the beginning of the year everyone had to sign up for either home economics or shop. There was no rule that boys had to take shop and girls had to take home ec. In fact, David shared his worktable with a girl.

But girls can get away with doing “boy” things a lot easier than boys can get away with doing “girl” things. Shop was David’s worst subject. He would have liked to have taken home ec. He knew he’d have to know how to cook some day. But he could just imagine what the other kids would have called him if he had signed up for home ec.

He was making a cheese board shaped like an apple. He had drawn a picture of it on his drafting paper, and now, slowly and carefully, he was trying to copy that picture onto a piece of maple wood.

Wham
!

David’s pencil slipped as the girl next to him hammered a nail into the doghouse she was building.

David turned and watched her. She was short and skinny, with very short, straight black hair that hung like a bowl over her head. Her name was Maureen, but everyone called her Mo.

Wham! Wham! Wham
!

He was fascinated by the way her skinny arms could wield the heavy hammer and pound in the nail all the way, with just three hits. The doghouse was almost bigger than she was.

He finished drawing the apple on his piece of wood. It didn’t look the same as his drafting paper drawing, but that didn’t matter. He knew he wouldn’t be able to cut it out along the lines anyway.

Wearing gloves and safety goggles, he cautiously approached the jig saw. He set the piece of wood on the metal plate and turned the switch. He tried to maneuver the wood so that the vibrating vertical blade stayed on the penciled outline of the apple. So far so good … perfect. “Nuts!”

He had cut the apple out perfectly, except he followed the wrong line at the top and accidentally cut off the apple’s stem. The stem was also supposed to be the handle of the cheese board.

Well, not all apples have stems, he consoled himself.

He returned to his worktable, took out his sheet of drafting paper, and erased the stem. He had learned early in the year that if he couldn’t make the project look like the drawing, he’d make the drawing look like the project.

“Is that for your
girlfriend
?” asked Mo.

“Huh?” said David. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe.” He was flattered that Mo would think he was the kind of guy who had a girlfriend.

“Are you going to carve your initials in it?” she asked.

“Why would I do that?” he asked. “She knows who I am.” Whoever she was.

“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with hearts?” asked Mo. She returned to her project.
Wham! Wham! Wham
!

He watched her bang another nail in the back of the doghouse, then glanced back down at his own measly project. It did look more like a heart than an apple.

He looked up to see Randy and Alvin coming his way. He nodded to them.

“Hey, Mo,” said Alvin, ignoring David. “Me and Randy were wondering something.”

Mo looked at them suspiciously. “What?” she asked, hammer in hand.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” asked Alvin.

He and Randy cracked up laughing.

“Buzz off,” said Mo.

“She’s neither,” said Randy. “She’s a dog! Look, she’s making a house for herself!”

They laughed again.

“Watch out, David,” said Randy. “I don’t know if she’s had her rabies shot.”

David smiled.

“How would you like a hammer up your ass?” asked Mo.

David turned red. He wasn’t sure if she was threatening only Alvin and Randy or if she was including him too. He didn’t dare look at her.

Alvin and Randy laughed and headed back to their table.

David stared down at his cheese board. He didn’t breathe until he heard Mo slam another nail into her doghouse.

“Y
OU SHOULD
have taken the cigarette this morning,” Scott told him as they walked home together after school. “You didn’t have to smoke it. All you have to do is go into the bathroom, light it, and let it burn for a few minutes so the smoke gets in your hair. One cigarette won’t kill you.”

“No, but my parents might,” said David.

Scott laughed.

David laughed along with him.

He was glad that they were still friends, at least as long as Roger wasn’t around.

“Sorry I didn’t wait for you this morning,” said Scott. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I mean you’re still my friend, it’s just that, you know, it’s not good for my reputation. I have to think of myself, too. You understand, right?”

“I guess,” said David.

“I’m taking a chance even walking home with you now,” said Scott. “But you’re my friend.”

“Thanks,” said David. “It’s not both of them, is it?” he asked. “I mean, I kind of get the feeling Randy thinks I’m okay. It’s just that Roger won’t give me a chance.”

Scott shook his head. “Man, you got that backwards,” he said. “Roger was saying that maybe you were kind of cool, now that there’s a curse on you, but Randy thinks you’re just a total dipshit.”

“D
ID YOU
say the Gettysburg Address?” asked Ricky.

“No, Mr. MacFarland didn’t call on me.”

“Too bad!” said Ricky. “I know you wouldn’t have made any mistakes.”

David shrugged.

“Can I hear it again?” Ricky asked.

Once more David recited the Gettysburg Address for his brother. He remembered what Mr. MacFarland had said, and he did his best to speak with the dignity and grace befitting the occasion.

“That’s right,” Ricky said when David was through. “You didn’t miss a single word.”

Ricky had memorized it too.

“Now do you want to hear my address?” asked David.

“Okay,” said Ricky.

“1411 Meadowbrook Lane,” said David.

Ricky cracked up laughing.

David shook his head in amazement. He wondered why Ricky didn’t realize that if he was really such a neat guy he wouldn’t be reciting the Gettysburg Address to his little brother. He’d be out with his friends or even with a girl. Only nerds stay home and recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to their little brothers.

What would Ricky think if he knew my so-called friends thought I was a dipshit? Or that there was a
girl I liked, but there was no way she would ever like me? And that while she was reciting the Gettysburg Address I fell over in my chair and then had to lie on my back like a bug?