George Read online

  On the first day of Benjamin’s sixth grade, Ben ran along the terrazzo corridor, trying to slide but not slip. He was late. He had just finished physical education, and someone had tied together the shoelaces of his new shoes while he had worn his sneakers. At least new leather soles slide well on freshly polished floors; a school year at Astra always began with both and stayed smooth only as long as other beginnings do.

  As he raced down the hallway, George spoke silently inside of him. “Why are you in such a hurry? Did they start a course in sex education in this place?”

  “No,” Ben answered silently, “organic chemistry.”

  “Oh, yippety do!” George exclaimed. “That’s the most exciting thing you’ve taken since you were taken to bed with chicken pox.”

  “They’ve never had this course before,” Ben explained. “It’s usually not taught until you’re in college.”

  “I could wait.”

  “I want to get the same lab table we had last year. Up front,” Ben said. “I’m afraid I’ll be late. I hope William will get there to save us a table up front.”

  “Do we have to sit by him again?”

  “What do you mean, have to? I hope we do. Sitting by him will make us his lab partner again. He chose me twice last year and for biology the year before …” Ben interrupted himself to open the door to the lab-classroom. Everyone else was already seated. William was. Right up front at the same lab table as Cheryl.

  Walking into the classroom and finding everyone already seated made Benjamin feel that they all knew something that he didn’t.

  They did.

  They knew about the chart. Ben saw it then, taped to the blackboard with masking tape. He looked at it, noticing only his name and position, the last table away from the board, and not even checking it long enough to read the name of his partner-to-be. For the first time in all his years at Astra, Ben would have to sit where he had been placed on a chart. Mr. Berkowitz had done it, and Ben had always thought that Mr. Berkowitz was liberal.

  Ben hitched his books a bit higher on his hip, brushed the hair out of his eyes with his free hand, and with his eyes lowered, especially avoiding William’s, he walked back to his assigned seat.

  “Who is our partner?” George asked. Ben busied himself with his books and didn’t answer. He often took out his mad feelings on George. George was used to it. “I know it’s a girl. Smells like a girl.”

  At last Ben looked up and answered, “Karen.”

  “Is she a giggler?” George asked.

  “No,” Ben answered.

  “I think that I’ll like her better than William.”

  “You’d like anyone better than William. I know that you never liked him.” Pause. “I liked being his partner. I was always happy when he picked me.”

  “He picked you only because he collects peculiarities.”

  “If I’m peculiar, it’s you who makes me so.”

  “Humph! Preferring organic chemistry to sex education. Blame that one on me.”

  Ben smiled. The final bell rang, and the explanation for the seating chart began.

  Mr. Berkowitz explained that he had set up the seating arrangement so that each of the seniors would have a senior for a partner. The seniors, he announced, would be allowed to do research.

  Mr. Berkowitz had a perfect right to make such an announcement even if it did leave Ben out. Mr. Berkowitz had worked to get even that piece of a program into the school. Mr. Berkowitz was in fact the soul and spirit behind the science department at Astra. He had come to Lawton Beach a year before. Everyone then had wanted to know what would make a man with his brains and qualifications come to Florida to teach. In the course of the year they had found only two things wrong with him: He was overweight, and he came from New Jersey.

  It had not been easy for a fat man from the North to convince the Board of Education that Astra ought to allow the seniors to do research. There were many reasons why the Board was worried, and one of their reasons was genuine; they were concerned about safety, and that was why Mr. Berkowitz had assigned the partnerships that he had. By insisting that the seniors always have a partner in the lab with them, he had quieted fears for their safety. He had reassured the lady who wore the flowered stretch bonnet over her hair curlers that the seniors would turn off all the lights in the lab, make certain that no faucets were dripping, and lock up before they left.

  The lady in the flowered bonnet had said that there was a lot of taxpayers money going down the drain on fancy programs at Astra. Mr. Berkowitz had joked, “Lab drains never get clogged with money; it dissolves in all the acid that gets thrown down, too.” The lady didn’t like the joke.

  Mr. Berkowitz was honest with the Board; he told them that they should not expect great and new discoveries from the seniors’ research. And the School Board wondered why they should bother at all.

  Mr. Berkowitz explained, “Suppose you have a child who shows a great talent for the piano. You give him a book, and you tell him to practice—without a piano. So he reads the book and moves his fingers along the edge of a desk or a table, imagining that it is a piano. He hears the sounds in his mind, and he comes to think that he’s pretty good. But is he? Can you tell? Can he? Well, I want to provide those seniors who are very talented in science with the scientific equivalent of a piano. I want to give them use of a lab. They will not be discovering new atomic particles, and they will not be winning a Nobel Prize as a result of what they do in the lab. They will not be composing new music, so to speak, but they will be learning to play some complicated pieces. They will be learning advanced laboratory techniques.”

  The Board wanted to hear more: It would be progressive.

  More. It would help bright kids get a head start in college.

  More. It would be wonderful advertisement for the community to have such a program. The Gateway to Space, Cape Kennedy, was so nearby. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people began saying that the Cape is the Gateway to Space, but Astra makes the keys to unlock the gate?

  Hmmm. Very interesting, Mr. Berkowitz. More. The publicity, gentlemen, would be good for business.

  The School Board voted yes—5 to 2. Five of the men on the Board were businessmen; the other was a dentist. The lady with the flowered stretch bonnet also cast a no vote. She later told the dentist that Mr. Berkowitz had reminded her that Cape Kennedy was, indeed, very close by. Since it was, why wasn’t he there making a lot of money instead of teaching school? Besides, she was convinced that people with moustaches were hiding something.

  As soon as the first bell for the first class in organic chemistry had rung, Mr. Berkowitz explained all this to the class. There he stood looking at Ben and saying that he regretted that only the seniors could participate. There he stood, wearing a white lab coat that almost met at the third button down, and explaining to all the boys and girls whom he called young men and young women that they were the beginnings. They were the pilots. They would determine whether or not programs such as advanced courses and such as private research would work in the future. He was sorry that not everyone in the course would be allowed to do research (he looked again at Ben, most singularly looked at Ben), but if they got part one to work, if everyone helped him and the seniors to make the program a success, perhaps in future years they could get the program expanded. He asked them to make a deposit for the future.

  George knew that if Ben could have wished away six years of his life, he would have done so right at that moment. He knew that Ben was longing to do research. But George was relieved that Ben would not be allowed to. Not because Ben was awkward in the lab, which he certainly was, but because George had felt neglected since Ben had gotten so involved with science. (Chemistry! Chemistry!) There had been times the year before when George had had to shout inside of Ben just to find out what the weather was like that day. And there had been other times when Ben had been working on a problem, scratching numbers and formulas on page after page of his notebook, all wound up, and George had had to fight to
get Ben to put his head back and listen as they reviewed the problem together.

  George was convinced that people ought to enjoy the pursuit of knowing as well as the knowing, and there he was saddled inside of Ben, who was galloping into the field of science, straight for the stable, not allowing George to smell the flowers along the way.

  Besides, George was relieved that William would not be their partner. George hated people who were more concerned with appearing different than with being different. More concerned with appearing smart than being smart. William was like that. George liked people who had curiosity and insight. William had sacrificed both (if he ever had had them) for appearances and the conquest of success.

  George was prepared for Ben’s brooding on the way home from school; Ben would tell George and maybe Howard of his disappointment, as if he, George, didn’t already know about Ben’s dreams of stirring and discovering. For the rest of that first class in organic chemistry, George said nothing that would aggravate Ben; he knew his place, and he prided himself on knowing when to keep his mouth shut.

  Ben sat in the school bus, third seat from the rear, feeling gloomy and looking it. George knew Ben’s mood but didn’t care; he was feeling cheerful. Ben thought that he shouldn’t.

  “Why are you so cheerful?” Ben asked.

  “I thought that as first days go, today wasn’t bad at all.”

  “How can you say that? Aren’t you mad that the seniors can do research and I can’t?”

  “The way I look at it, Ben, it isn’t that we’ve lost research so much as that we’ve lost William for a partner.”

  “I never realized that you disliked him so much.”

  “I’ve kept pretty quiet about it. Wasn’t that nice of me?”

  “Not all that quiet, George. There were times last year…. Do you know what William said to me as class was dismissed? I’ll tell you what he said to me. He said, ‘I’m sorry, Ben, that everyone can’t do research.’”

  “And do you know what I say, Ben? I’ll tell you what I say. I say that if everyone were allowed to do research, he wouldn’t. He has as much need to be different as most people have to be honest.” George was right, and strangely, wonderfully, he was right without knowing all of the facts.

  William Hazlitt had begun life with a good start at being different. He appeared on earth as the only child in his family and the only grandchild on either side. He immediately got used to being an only. Later he had to devote time and energy to it, and it was sometimes difficult to be different in a school that allowed everyone to be. But William managed. At Astra where everyone wore sport shirts and casual clothes, sometimes even Bermuda shorts, William took to wearing a suit and vest and tie. Even when the temperature arched its way to eighty degrees the second thing in the Florida morning. William took karate lessons at the YMCA until two eighth graders from Astra joined the class, and then he switched to French cooking. William was a myth at Astra. He was Mercury, quick and flashy; kids called him Flash.

  Because Ben had been the youngest and smallest in his science courses ever since he was old enough to read, because at first things were hard to reach, and because Ben had a natural tendency toward awkwardness, the class called him Splash. Ben didn’t take his awkwardness seriously. He carried around a mental picture of himself being a scientist. As he poured from one container to another, spilling small blobs on the table top, he pictured himself pouring from one container to another, nothing spilling, and the picture labeled: LIFE MAGAZINE VISITS FAMOUS YOUNG SCIENTIST. He was always surprised when things broke or burned because to himself he didn’t picture things happening that way. He thought that Splash was a funny name, but that it didn’t fit him.

  Ben was awkward about mixing molecules in the lab, but he was quick and graceful about pushing them around on paper. Everyone in the class regarded him as a quiet guru. They came to him for help. Coming to Ben was easier for people than going to anyone else in class because Ben was apart from them; they could afford to show him their weaknesses. Quietly Ben helped them. When they came, George would get irritated at the amount of time they took up and the little thanks they gave in return. But they never knew that while Ben was saying, “You’ve got to set up the proportions on the basis of their molecular weight,” George was screaming, “Why don’t you tell that dum-dum to run his elbow over the page? That would do him as much good as reading it does.” They always thought that the smile that Ben wore as he helped them was gentleness; part of it actually was.

  George allowed Ben to think these things over. Then he added, “Do you know what? I’ll tell you what: Everyone knows that you’re different. So William had to make your differences part of him. That’s why he made you his partner.”

  Ben didn’t answer. George was able to get in the last word, “Hunh!” he said, “Farewell, farewell. Farewell to the class odd couple: Flash and Splash.”

  That year, as in others, arrangements were made for Howard, whose school day was shorter than Benjamin’s. It was arranged that he stay at the Sandlers’ and play with Raymond until Ben got off the bus, and the brothers could walk home together. Raymond was Howard’s only friend and club member. Howard always had a club, not a secret symbiotic society. Once it had been a Keds Club; that was formed when Howard got a pair of Keds instead of the brand of sneakers sold at the local discount store. He told Raymond that only kids with Keds would be allowed into the club. Mrs. Sandler had just purchased for Raymond a pair of Brand X from the local discount store. Since he was not soon to wear those out or outgrow them either, Howard’s Keds Club would have been without members unless he changed the membership rules.

  Howard did.

  He had made it the One C Club, which meant that members had to get one C on their report cards every grading period. Raymond’s mother tried to break up the One C. Raymond had allowed his handwriting to become sloppy. “What do you expect to do,” she asked, “change the name to One D as soon as your handwriting gets bad enough and your grade slides right along with it?” Raymond thought that the question was one that should be answered, so he asked the President.

  President Howard had replied, “Listen, Ray, we’ll have to take out a new charter if we change the name to One D. You know there will be legal fees, and you already owe me $6,206 for fees and fines. Do you want to make it $6,216?”

  Raymond thought a minute. “Maybe if I do happen to get a D in handwriting, I can swing it so that I can bring spelling down to a C. That would be my one C.”

  Howard answered, “You better just keep that C in handwriting.”

  And that was the thing about Howard: He knew his limits.

  There were other times when Mrs. Sandler was not fond of Howard. But it was hard not to be fond of Charlotte Carr. It was hard not to want to help her out even if it meant taking care of Howard every weekday afternoon from 2:45 p.m. until Ben picked him up at 4:00. Mrs. Sandler also believed that an only child like Raymond should play with at least one other child his age. One other like Howard was at least and enough for Mrs. Sandler.

  That afternoon at the beginning of Ben’s sixth grade, Ben and Howard walked home from the Sandlers’ together, Ben dragging a heavy bookcase as well as heavy thoughts. After they walked one block, crossed the street, and turned the corner, Howard asked, “How are you today, George?”

  George answered, “Exhausted.”

  Howard asked, “How do you think Ben feels, lugging a heavy bookcase on the outside and you on the inside?”

  “I am no harder for Ben to carry around than a slight case of indigestion,” George replied.

  “Speaking of indigestion,” Howard said, “what’s for supper tonight?”

  “Tonight,” George answered, “our Busy Little Homemaker, known to one and all as Mother, will provide us with frozen pot pies, instant mashed potatoes, and canned peaches. The last, she calls dessert.”

  “Tell me,” Howard urged, “do you eat when Ben does? Ben sure eats a lot.”

  “Don’t get personal,” George a
nswered.

  Howard appealed to Ben, “I noticed that you sure eat a lot, Ben. You eat a whole heck of a lot. Is that because you’re eating for George, too? You sure eat a lot. Do you know when George eats?”

  Ben moaned, “Aw, c’mon, Howard. I don’t pry into what goes on inside of you.”

  They stopped at the supermarket to buy the list of groceries that Mrs. Carr had put into Ben’s lunch box along with the money for them. Benjamin and Howard were the only two people in the whole town of Lawton Beach and maybe in all of south Florida who walked to the grocery store. They were allowed to wheel their purchases home in a cart; they took turns pushing each other and the empty cart back.

  After the groceries were unpacked George said, “You better get something in the oven before Betty Anti-Crocker comes home, or we won’t eat until midnight. Can you imagine what she’d do to a meal at midnight? Her regular cooking is one of the black arts.” Thus, George had a few words to describe Mrs. Carr in the kitchen. Few, and all of them unkind.

  But even George liked it when Mrs. Carr was around. She was what she was without apology. She read good books, laughed a lot, and relied on Ben to find her nylon stockings when she misplaced them, which was often.

  two

  Benjamin’s sixth grade was only three weeks old when George and Benjamin had a bitter disagreement, a preview of coming attractions. William caused it. William who was no longer Ben’s partner.

  Because the organic chemistry course was special and because its students came from many different grades, it was difficult to arrange a schedule in which there could be two consecutive hours for lab for everyone. Therefore, the class was scheduled for just before lunch period. Mondays and Wednesdays, when they had lab work to do, those people who were in the class gave up part of their lunch hour. They did so willingly. All did it willingly. Sometimes they skipped going to the cafeteria altogether and munched on sandwiches in the lab. Doing that made them feel devoted to their work, as Madame Curie had been devoted, starving and stirring. It also made them feel part of something that was intimate but bigger than themselves—close knit like astronauts, locked in together and eating on the job, sharing good times, inconveniences, and an important mission.