Babcock

Babcock

a novel by Joe Cottonwood

Copyright © 2012 by Joe Cottonwood

Previously published in 1996 by Scholastic, Inc. For this current edition the author has corrected a few errors in the text.

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I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There is nothing more to say.

The poem ends,

Soft as it began —

I loved my friend.

—Langston Hughes

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Legs

I was throwing popcorn to some ducks.

Suddenly a pair of legs — human legs — went flying in front of my face.

Hey, I said.

Hey, yourself, said the owner of the legs. She was a skinny white girl with blonde hair and freckles — thousands of freckles. Big ears. She was my age. She went to my school. She hung out with two other girls who always turned their backs and giggled whenever anybody walked by — or at least, whenever I walked by.

I don’t like to be giggled at.

She stood up straight as if she was trying to stretch that skinny body until it was thin as a noodle, and then she turned a handspring — and again, her legs flew in front of my face.

I said, Could you do that somewhere else?

She stood facing me. Then, instead of answering me, she giggled — and did another handspring.

I said, I was here first.

You don’t own this pond, she said. Although I do see you here practically every day. What are you doing, anyway?

Never mind. I wasn’t going to try to explain to some giggler about how I spent my life. I did spend a part of most days at the lake: feeding ducks, watching frogs, talking to dragonflies. I like animals.

She tossed her blonde hair out of her face and said, Would you move somewhere else? Though it was a request, she spoke with the assurance of someone who was used to getting her way — because she was a girl. Because she was blonde. Because some people would think she was cute. The moss grows here, she said. And the ground is so soft. She bounced up and down on her toes. It’s springy — like a big mat. So would you please move?

I felt a twitching on my upper lip. When I feel that twitching, I smile. People who know me — who’ve seen my regular smile — know to watch out for this one. Boone told me once that it makes me look dead, like a smile that an undertaker put on my face. It’s a warning — if you recognize it.

No, I said. Of course, I could have moved. I could throw popcorn to ducks anywhere around the pond. But I don’t like to be pushed. Not by bullies. And not by skinny girls who giggle at me in school. And now my upper lip was twitching, and I was showing the undertaker smile, but she didn’t know what it meant.

Well, she said, I guess there’s room enough for both of us here.

No.

She looked at me with surprise. She frowned. But instead of arguing, she turned three cartwheels in a triangular pattern that brought her right back in front of me.

She brushed some hair out of her face. See? We can share.

No.

She stared at me, looking partly puzzled and partly hurt, as if she was wondering, Why are you acting so nasty to me when I’m so cute? She held her hands up near her head in preparation for turning another cartwheel or handspring or doubleflip gymnastics razzledazzle whatever when suddenly an orange dragonfly — who should have known better — zipped out of nowhere, hovered for just a moment in front of her face, and landed on her shoulder.

For a split second she looked down at that dragonfly. And in that split second I was thinking, Maybe she’s all right, after all. Maybe the dragonflies know something I don’t know about her.

Yech! she shouted, and she slapped her shoulder. The dragonfly cracked into slime and fell dead at her feet. Ugh, she said, curling her lip. "Ee-uw. Gross. Now I’ve got insect guts on my hand." She shook it in the air.

That’s when it happened. I didn’t mean to trip her. I didn’t mean to do anything except flip the dead dragonfly away with the toe of my shoe while ducking my head so she couldn’t see the wetness brimming in my eyes, but all of a sudden she shifted her feet thisaway just as my leg went thataway, and we both lost our balance and fell to the ground, and some things are just instinct — because I was angry, you know, and I’ve fought with boys plenty of times who thought they could bully me, and it always came out the same, with me on top, and here I’d fallen accidentally and it just . . . well . . . I was sitting on her.

She flailed her legs. She screamed: "Let me up, you big fat slob!"

Promise you’ll go away, I said.

"You’re just jealous because you can’t do a cartwheel, she shouted. Because you’re too fat." She was punching me.

At least I’m not skinny, I said. You’re flat as a board.

Don’t call me flat!

Don’t call me fat.

"You are fat. Fat! Fat! Fat!"

You aren’t even blonde, I said. You’re a fake.

"I am not a fake."

Your eyebrows are dark. You dyed your hair.

"I did not. They’re just different colors. She stopped flailing her legs and punching my side. In a hurt voice, she said, Don’t make fun of the way I look."

You started it.

"I started it? You tripped me. You’re sitting on me."

You called me fat.

"Well. You are fat."

I was starting to feel uncomfortable. What was I doing? How would it look to somebody passing by? I was too old to be fighting with a girl.

This is unbearable, she said. Would you please let me up?

Will you go away?

No.

The anger had gone out of me. The dragonfly was dead. That was that. And as for what she’d said about me — I wasn’t thinking about what she’d said. Instead, I was noticing what she hadn’t said. She’d been angry; she’d said the most awful thing she could think of to try to hurt me; she was white; I was black, and she’d called me fat. That’s all. Just fat.

I stood up, reached out a hand, and helped pull her to her feet.

I’m sorry, I said.

She didn’t say anything. She was standing with her head bowed and her hands on her hips.

I shouldn’t have done that, I said.

She didn’t say anything.

Are you all right?

She didn’t answer.

Would you please say something?

Speaking to the ground, she said, It’s not fair, you know. I can’t help it if I’m skinny. I can’t help it if my eyebrows are the wrong color. I can’t help it if my ears are too big and I have too many freckles. You shouldn’t say that.

I didn’t say anything about ears and freckles.

She looked up at me. "You were going to."

No. I wasn’t. What amazed me was, she didn’t think she was cute. I was all wrong about her. I felt confused. I was looking into her eyes: blue, flashing, like sun on water. What had we been fighting about, anyway? I felt dizzy. I said, I happen to like big ears. And freckles.

She narrowed her eyes. But then she set her jaw with determination and said, You lost, you know. You beat me up, but you lost.

I didn’t beat you up.

You tripped me. You sat on me.

"I didn’t beat you up. I didn’t hit you. Not once. You were hitting me. I bet I didn’t even hurt you."

You hurt my feelings.

I said I was sorry.

You fought. And you lost.

She was standing in front of me. She knew she had just as much right to stand there as I did. Oh yeah — that’s what we’d been fighting about. And she’d proved that I couldn’t intimidate her. I’d lost my temper, and then she’d lost hers, and we’d shouted some things that now we wished we hadn’t said, and we both were still here. Now I felt bad. I felt guilty. I felt big and awkward and stupid. I felt like a bully. She was right. I’d lost.

Truce? I said.

She looked me right in the eye. My name’s Kirsten.

I know, I said. My name’s Babcock.

I know, she said.

It’s funny how you can go to the same school, and some people you get to know and maybe you like them and maybe you don’t, and other people you just know by name, and it can stay that way for years until suddenly something happens. And it just happened.

What made you so mad? she asked.

You killed a dragonfly.

"You like bugs?"

Yes.

She stared at me. She looked me up and down, from black eyeglasses to red hightop sneakers, as if she’d never seen me before, as if knowing that I liked bugs made me an entirely different creature.

Wow, she said.

The way she said that wow made me think that something had just happened, something important. But I didn’t know what.

She took the ends of some of her hairs between her fingers, rolled them between thumb and index finger, and then absentmindedly placed the hairs into her mouth and started biting them.

I’d never seen someone chew on her hair before.

Then she spat it out. You know, she said, and she looked out over the pond, some people — and I’m not saying this because I want to call you a name, but I think you ought to know — some people call you a geek.

Her friends, I thought. Her giggly friends call me a geek. I gazed at the water, like her. I think at this point we felt it was easier to talk if we didn’t actually look at each other. Some mallard ducks came swimming toward us from the middle of the pond.

But they’re wrong, she said. "You’re not a geek. Although you are. . ."

What?

"Different. I mean . . . you’re the only kid in school who —you’re the only kid I’ve ever heard of — maybe you’re the only kid in the world — who has only one name. How come you don’t have a first name?"

So I explained, as I always have to. My parents left the first name blank on my birth certificate because they had this idea — a goofy idea, they now admit — that I should choose my own name. Meanwhile, they called me Baby. And then Baba, because that’s what I started saying. And when I finally got old enough to choose, they found out it was too late to change the birth certificate.

But, Kirsten said, "people could call you a different name even if it isn’t on your birth certificate."

Yes. But I don’t want them to.

Because you want to be different.

Because I want to be . . . who I am.

She furrowed her dark eyebrows. You are definitely Babcock, she said. Babcock and his briefcase.

It comes in handy.

Did you bring it here?

I pointed to it leaning against the trunk of a willow tree.

What’s in that briefcase, anyway?

I didn’t answer. What I did do, though, was move my lips and hold out my hand. Dragonfly, dragonfly, come to me before I die.

Soon, one came. Kirsten didn’t move. She watched in silence as it perched on my fingertip and then flew away. With her eyes still focused on the disappearing dragonfly, she said something that caught me by surprise. She asked, Are you gifted?

I shrugged.

She was looking at me now. She said, I know your grades are better than mine.

How do you know?

"Come on. Everybody knows."

Nothing is secret in this town.

And, she said, "I see you reading books all the time."

So?

"That’s what gifted people do. She cleared her throat. I think she realized that what she’d said sounded a little strange. Actually, she continued, my mother says that everyone is gifted in their own way. She cleared her throat again. And whatever my special gift is, it isn’t getting A’s."

Maybe it’s gymnastics, I said.

No. It isn’t. She threw a pebble in the water. I’m sorry I killed your bug. I’m sorry I called you fat.

"I am fat."

She stood up. "And I am flat, she said. But I’m still hoping something will happen."

It probably will, I said. Maybe in a big way. Maybe it will be your special gift.

She looked startled.

I can’t quite believe I said that. I felt myself blushing, though I don’t think she saw it. Of course, it’s hard to tell when I blush.

She stared at me for a moment. And then . . . I saw it.

She smiled.

A smile that was all freckles and ears. She turned one last handspring. And she ran away. She ran with grace. She ran like a breeze slipping over the grass.

The Juvenile Reptile

We had this band. We practiced in my garage.

Starting a band was my idea. The name I gave it was Two One Five Five Two. Boone, our bass player, said we should be called The Four Hairs because we each looked so different. Boone had brown hair that was all cowlick: it would lie down if he wetted it, but when it dried it just stood straight up like a hedgehog. So he kept it short. Law, our drummer, had blond hair, casual and shaggy — the surfer look. Dylan, our keyboard player, had sleek black hair. Dylan’s a sharp dresser — black turtlenecks, leather shoes. He wears an earring. He carries a comb in his back pocket and always keeps every last hair in place. My hair is curly, medium length. I play guitar.

Then one day we decided to write a song. Dylan suggested it. We’d made up raps before. They were easy. Dylan, though was talking about something new for us. He was talking about music. Dylan liked to make up little tunes on the keyboard — not whole songs, just little bits of tune.

Law tapped out a beat on the drums. Bum bum bum, bum-bump a dumpa dumpa. How’s that for a beat? Law asked.

I can dance to it, Dylan said. Now we need a tune.

And words, I said.

I’ll do the tune, Dylan said. You do the words. He started fooling around on the keyboard.

Bum bum bum, bum-bump a dumpa dumpa. Bum bum bum, bum-bump a dumpa dumpa.

I listened to the drums, and — to my surprise — I already knew the words. I’ve got it, I said. Listen: ‘Dragonfly, dragonfly, are you friendly? Are you shy?’

What’s that mean? Boone asked.

It sucks, Law said.

We don’t want to write a song about insects,