The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez (10 page)

No one says anything, until Beanie blurts out, “What does it matter? Did anyone think Benny and Sara's poem was a prose poem when he read it?”

“If you've ever read any poetry,” Paige says, “you'd know it's been written with line breaks for thousands of years.”

And then the unlikeliest of voices butts in. “So what?” Big Joe says. “We don't live a thousand years ago.”

We argue back and forth like this for a few minutes until Caulfield interrupts everyone. “Ms. Butterfield and I have decided to turn this into a learning experience. How would you feel about a real contest, where one boy writes a prose poem and one girl writes a verse poem, and then the class can decide which one is best?”

“Only if Benny writes the prose poem,” Beanie says, and all the guys agree.

“And only if Claudine writes the verse poem,” Paige says, and all the girls nod their heads as one.

This is about the closest I've come to being class president, but somehow it doesn't feel so good.

“Can we agree on this, Claudine and Benny?” Ms. D asks.

“You bet,” Claudine says.

I'm trying to respond, but Benny the Wordsmith is suddenly struck dumb.

“Benny?” Ms. D asks again, and Big Joe says, “He'll do it,” so I agree.

“Ms. Butterfield and I,” Caulfield adds, “have decided that you'll have a week to write a poem about love or loss.”

Ms. D starts to explain what that means when the bell rings, and five minutes later I find myself with Jocko and Beanie.

“All the guys will be counting on you, Benny,” Beanie says.

“How can anyone in their right mind expect me to write a better poem than Claudine?”

“It doesn't matter,” Beanie says. “Your poem can stink as long as it's not broken up or rhymes. And it won't stink because it will be a guy poem.”

“He's right, dude,” Jocko says, “but you really got yourself into it, didn't you? It's going to be a very weird party this weekend.”

“What do you mean?”

Jocko points to the outdoor basketball courts, where Claudine and a bunch of girls are standing. They're staring at us and don't look very happy.

“The good news, Benny, is there's no reason to worry about dancing unless you want to dance with me.”

Love or Loss

“L
ove or loss?” Irene says. She's sitting next to Aldo at the granite table. They're drinking Cokes and eating popcorn she just made. Crash and my grandfather are outside on the back porch, playing a board game. I guess all defenseless animals have been made safe, at least for now. The weather is growing cooler, so my grandfather has a red plaid shawl draped over his shoulders.

“Love or loss?” Aldo says, echoing Irene. “I mean, you haven't even started dating.” In between eating, he's drumming on the table with two fingers to music only he can hear.

“Ms. Butterfield said to think of love in broad terms, like anything important to us. The same goes for loss.”

“So you could write a poem about losing your favorite pencil?” Aldo asks.

“That's not funny,” Irene says.

“No, Aldo's right,” I say. “According to Caulfield Thomas Jones, you can write a poem on anything.”

“I agree,” Aldo says, “but this will teach you that girls take poetry very seriously.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah, girls also expect you to think exactly like them. They're merciless.”

Irene punches Aldo in the arm.

“Jocko already found that out. Becky Walters won't even talk to him until this contest is over.”

“That's going to make for an interesting party,” Irene says. “You really do have a way of creating drama, Benny.”

“Is the dude mad at you?” Aldo asks.

“No, Jocko always has my back.”

Aldo laughs. “Don't be so sure about that when it comes to girls.”

As we're talking, Crash helps my grandfather through the sliding glass door leading from the porch to the sitting room. Sometimes I'm amazed at how fragile my grandfather is. It was only two years ago he was crushing golf balls on the range instead of putting them on the practice green.

“Who won, Grandpa?” I ask.

“Won what?”

“The game.”

“We don't play to win, right, Crash?” At least he's got the name right today.

“Crash always plays to win, Grandpa.”

“Grandpa and me have different rules,” Crash says.

“Hey, Crash,” Aldo says. “Benny's having girl trouble. Does that ever happen to you?”

Crash leads my grandfather to the recliner, and Aldo goes over to help.

“Any girls making your life miserable, Crash?”

“How could they do that?” Crash says.

“Well then, any hot girls in your class?”

“Hot?” Crash says.

“Yeah, you know what I mean?” But it's clear Crash doesn't think of girls like that.

“There's one girl,” he says, “who's allergic to peanuts.”

Grandpa starts laughing. “You gotta love this kid.” Then he adds, “What girl troubles do you have, Benny? I'm an au . . . ,” and he's struggling again for a word until Aldo offers “authority.” “Yeah, I'm an authority on women. On which ones not to pick.”

“Inappropriate, Grandpa,” Irene says.

I tell Grandpa about Claudine and the contest, and about the topic of love and loss.

“Why don't you write a poem on Spot?” Crash says seriously, and on hearing his name, Spot stumbles toward us.

“I don't think so, Crash,” I say, and everyone agrees.

“It'll come to you, Benny,” my grandfather says. “You're an Alvarez; you'll find something horrible to write about. That's what I remember about poetry, a lot of sadness and anger and wars.”

“It's different now, Grandpa; you can write about anything, even happy stuff.”

“Who'd want to read that?”

“He's right,” Aldo says. “Poetry should be about the human condition, and the human condition is pretty rugged.”

I'm not sure what he means by the “human condition,” but Irene knows because she says, “You have to stop hanging around with the Alvarez guys. You're starting to sound like them.”

As she's talking, I notice my grandfather mumbling to himself. He's gaping at the sliding glass door, like he sees something the rest of us can't.

“What is it, Grandpa?”

“What's what?”

“What're you looking at?”

He doesn't answer, so I go to the window just in time to see a hawk flying away from the house toward a wooded area. When I look back at my grandfather, he seems angry.

“What was it?” Crash asks.

“Just an airplane,” I say.

A Sick Dog

T
he next morning Beanie shows up alone. “Jocko left before I got there.”

“That's a first.”

“Kind of serendipitous.”

“Unexpected?”

“No.”

“Tragic?”

“Wrong again.”

“So what is it?”

“To be honest, I forgot.”

“Not much of a game, Beanie, if you can't remember the word's meaning.”

Instead of reaching for the Book, he says, “It'll come by lunch. That's the way my brain works. Like there's all this information banging around in there, and every once in a while, something comes into focus.”

About twenty minutes later, we're walking toward the school's entrance when we see Jocko arguing with Becky Walters, though it looks like
she's
arguing and
he's
listening. She shakes her finger at him and walks away. When he sees us coming, he looks uncomfortable.

“Don't say anything,” he says.

“Not a problem,” I say.

But then he decides to clue us in. “She said if she had her way, she'd ‘uninvite'—that was her word—every guy to her party.”

“Did you tell her she meant ‘disinvite'?” Beanie says.

Jocko shakes his head. “No, dude, I guess I forgot that important point.”

“I'm sorry, Jocko,” I say. “I feel like I messed you up.”

“It's not your fault. They're taking this stuff too seriously, though you're the guy they'd like to spray to death with perfume. They think you're out to get Claudine, and they can't believe you're doing it while Hobo is dying.”

“Hobo's dying? How was I supposed to know that?”

“He got worse a day ago.”

“What am I, clairvoyant?”

“It's just a matter of days,” Jocko says, “or at least that's Becky's take on it.”

“You think she's telling the truth?”

“Of course she's telling the truth. It's not like she's a whack job.” I start thinking about Aldo's warning and decide not to criticize Becky for fear of losing Jocko to the Dark Side.

“Well, I didn't have anything to do with Hobo dying,” I say.

“No, you didn't,” Jocko says. “Just bad timing.”

Then we trudge off to homeroom.

In Mr. Congo's class we're laboring on algebra worksheets. I'm having trouble focusing on all the 5 + y's and 14 – y's because I keep staring at Claudine. I try to imagine what it would be like if Spot had cancer. He smells to high heaven, but he's almost as old as me. I don't have a memory that doesn't include him.

Claudine's working feverishly on our algebra problems until she senses my preoccupation with her. She looks up and makes this strange face, her eyes bulging, her head wobbling like one of those bobblehead dolls. It's a face that says, “What are you looking at, you nitwit?”

After class, she corners me and Beanie in the hall. “It's impolite to stare.”

“I wasn't staring,” I say, which is of course a lie.

“Yes, you were. Sometimes you're very creepy, like a bug.”

Ouch. “I was just thinking about Hobo. I heard he was sick. I have a dog too.”

“I don't need you to worry about Hobo, Benny Alvarez.”

“There's no reason to be nasty,” Beanie says. “He was just trying to be beneficent.”

“That's not even the right word, Beanie. You guys think you're smart, but a monkey can look up words in a thesaurus.”

I'm getting a little angry now. “I don't think that's true.”

Her eyes are doing that crazy changing-color thing again, and as much as I'd like to yell at her, I can't. It's weird, but when she's angry, she seems more interesting to me.

“Just forget it, Beanie,” I say.

On the way to Ms. D's class, I'm getting a lot of high fives from other seventh-grade guys. “You the man, Benny,” one kid says. “Poetry sucks,” says another dude, who usually says just about everything sucks. Just my luck that when I finally become a celebrity, some of my fans end up being morons.

Ms. D's class is uneventful until the very end, when she drops a bombshell on us.

“I have something to tell you,” she says. Her hands are in front of her, palm to palm. Then she's interlocking her fingers, though swiftly changing her mind and rubbing her palms together again. It's like she can't decide whether she wants to make dough or pray.

“I know how quickly rumors travel in a small school, so I want you to know that I'm engaged to be married.” At this announcement, all the girls let out a collective sigh, and Ms. D adds, “And my fiancé is Mr. Jones.”

I'm not sure how I feel about this development, but in an instant, something very weird happens. Ms. D morphs before my eyes back to Ms. Butterfield. Although that Ms. D smile is more glorious than ever, she doesn't seem very intriguing anymore.

Later, Beanie's paging through the Book, reciting possible descriptions for the new Ms. D: “humdrum, dismal, drab, dreary,” which seem like words to describe the weather. “Monotonous, uninteresting, and a word none of us can say that's spelled j-e-j-u-n-e.” Then finally, Beanie comes upon “lackluster.”

“Stop,” I say. “What's the definition of that?”

“‘Lacking brilliance or radiance or vitality and enthusiasm.'”

“From what you guys say, Ms. D certainly doesn't lack vitality or enthusiasm,” Jocko says.

“It's still the right word,” I argue. “We decided to call her Ms. Demigoddess because she was like those goddesses who appear in the movies, surrounded by glowing light. Somehow the picture of her trailing old stuffy Caulfield around for the rest of her life takes the shine off.”

“I thought you liked the guy,” Jocko says.

“I never went that far.”

“Benny's right,” Beanie says. “She lacks luster. As of today, I proclaim that Ms. D will forever be spoken of as Ms. Butterfield.” Then he holds out his hand and Jocko places his on top of Beanie's, both of them waiting for me to do the same.

“Don't you think we ought to wait a few weeks?” I say. “Maybe the whole engagement will fall through.”

“Then we'll go back to Ms. D,” Jocko says.

“Can we do that?”

“Jeez, Benny,” Beanie says, “it was your idea,” so I place my hand on theirs and we say in one voice, “Agreed.”

Crash Crashes

B
y Wednesday, I still don't have a topic for my poem. I'm nervous about that and also Becky Walters's party. But Wednesday is a good day, because I take my after-school class on how to draw cartoons. I'm probably the worst artist in the entire middle school, but Mrs. Jameson has no qualms about lying to me. She retired years ago and is one of the nicest people I know. Her hair, which is thin and mostly gone, is dyed a shoe-polish kind of brown, and she has bags under her eyes that nearly reach her cheekbones.

Today we're working on a still life. We were told to bring three objects from home and position them as we see fit. They should be objects that mean something to us. I brought one of Spot's plastic bones, a garage remote control (don't ask me why), and a rabbit's foot my grandfather gave me. I position them on top of one another like logs on a fire, then draw until Mrs. Jameson stops by. My bone looks like an amoeba; my rabbit's foot, a bird's claw; and the garage opener, a bologna sandwich.

“Pretty bad, huh?”

“Don't be so critical, Benny,” Ms. Jameson says. “You're improving every week. Why did you arrange them as you have?”

“To me, it's like putting logs in the woodstove at home. If you pile them the right way, you have a better fire.”

“What a wonderful metaphor,” she says, then adds what she always does: “Whatever you lack in talent, and that will change, you make up for with heart.”

So much for Mr. Negativity.

“Thanks, Mrs. Jameson,” I say.

She's about to offer some suggestions when we spot my mother at the door, even though she's not supposed to pick me up for another half hour. She looks flustered and gestures to Mrs. Jameson. They speak for a few minutes, then Mrs. Jameson says I have to leave.

“Am I in trouble?”

“Of course not.”

I pack up, and the first thing I ask my mother is, “Is Dad dead?”

“Dad?”

“Well, he's always talking about dying.”

“No, it's your grandfather.”

“He's dead?”

“No, he's had another stroke. He had a seizure, too, so we're not sure how severe it will be.”

“Where's Dad?”

“He had to go to Boston to interview someone for his book, and there's a huge accident on the interstate, so it may be hours before he gets home.”

“Does Crash know?”

“Yes, and that's the problem. We don't know where he is. I'll explain in the car.”

It's pouring outside, so we run to our minivan. Inside, my mother says that when my father phoned her about the stroke and said he was stuck in traffic, she left work to be home for Crash, but he wasn't there. On the answering machine was an earlier frantic message from Gloria, who finished by saying, “I think this is the end.”

“And Crash played it when he got home?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't Gloria call Dad on his cell?”

“Maybe she was overwhelmed at the time.”

“So no one knows where Crash is? Jeez, it's raining pretty hard.”

“I know.”

“Did you call Irene? You know how Crash feels about Aldo.”

“They're at the house waiting for us.”

When we get there, Crash is still AWOL. My mother's about to call the police when the phone rings.

“Benny?” It's my father.

“Yeah?”

“I just got a call from Bob Nicholson.”

“At Firefly?”

“Yeah, he says Crash is there. He's putting on the practice green.”

“It's pouring.”

“Bob tried to coax him inside, but he won't go. He even threatened Bob with his putter.”

I can almost hear Grandpa saying, “You gotta love that kid.”

“How did he get there? It's about five miles away.”

“Don't know, but you and Aldo should pick him up, and I'll call when I get to the hospital.”

“Sorry about Grandpa,” I say.

“Don't worry. He's a tough guy.”

When I hang up, Aldo and I drive to Firefly. We pull into the parking lot, which is empty except for one car. It's still raining fairly hard, and I can see a small figure tossing a coin behind his back, then putting. Mr. Nicholson comes out of the clubhouse, holding an umbrella over his head. “I tried to talk him inside, but he's really stubborn.”

“We know,” I say.

When Mr. Nicholson trots away, I tell Aldo I'll handle this one myself, and he offers me Irene's umbrella, but I refuse, saying, “Crash would want me to get wet with him.”

Aldo laughs, then stops. “Sorry, it really isn't funny.”

“That's okay. Grandpa would appreciate the humor.”

“You're right.”

When I walk toward the green, Crash pretends he doesn't see me, so I stand quietly, watching him go through my grandfather's ritual.

“Grandpa's not going to die,” I finally say.

“You don't care anyway.” He faces me, and I'm pretty sure he's crying, but it's hard to tell with the rain.

“That's not fair, Crash.”

“After the last stroke, you and Dad said he'd be better off dead. You guys talk around me like I'm not there.”

“We didn't say that, Crash. I said I wouldn't want Grandpa to live if he's a vegetable.”

“But he isn't. Mom's right—you're just negative.”

“How did you get here?”

“I walked, then some woman gave me a ride.”

“Some woman?”

“Yeah, she felt bad because I was getting wet.”

I feel like smacking him for getting in a stranger's car. “Let's just tell Dad you walked here, okay?”

“Okay,” he says. “Is Grandpa really going to live? Gloria doesn't think so.”

“We don't know much yet, but no one's talking about him dying.”

“Gloria did.”

“Sometimes Gloria gets hysterical. Do you mind if I play with you?”

“You don't have your putter.”

“I can use yours.”

“Mine's too short.”

“Come on, Crash, help me out here.”

And so we putt around for a while, the golf ball struggling to roll over the wet green. The rain continues to pound us, my hoodie and jeans sticking to my skin. I feel very tired and drained, and even a bit sad, but I try to be strong for Crash. After about ten minutes of putting, Crash says matter-of-factly, “We can go home now,” so we trudge back to Aldo's car.

“We're going to mess up your seats,” I say to Aldo.

“Don't worry about it. They're leather.”

“Hi, Aldo,” Crash says, like nothing important has happened over the last two hours.

“You scared the heck out of us,” Aldo says.

“I guess that's why they named me Crash.”

Later that night, we learn my grandfather will recover, though he has to stay in the hospital for now. We're told he'll be very weak and may have to use a cane or wheelchair for a while.

I'm about to fall asleep when my father comes into my room. He looks tired, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “You okay?” he asks.

“I guess.”

“In the future, we have to watch what we say around Crash.”

“You mean about Grandpa dying.”

“Yeah.”

“But it's what we felt.”

“I'm not blaming you, Benny. I'm one of the great blowhards of all time, but there's a difference between being brutally honest and being insensitive.” He's about to leave when he asks, “Did you write your poem yet?”

“No, but I want it to be on Grandpa.”

“Won't that be tough now?”

“I dunno.”

“You ever think of choosing a good memory, like you did in that night crawler poem? I'm sure that would perk him up.”

“I'll think about it,” I say.

After my father leaves, I clutch the rabbit's foot I brought to art class. Unlike any Alvarez I've heard of, my grandfather used to hunt, and my father says smoked venison used to hang in their attic. Before his strokes, my grandfather also tinkered with wood, and my room is scattered with birds he crafted and painted.

Thinking about this, I go to my desk and write these two sentences: “Grandpa cocking his hunting rifle. Something to sink one's teeth into, like smoked deer meat hanging in the attic.”