Criss Cross (6 page)

Leon told everyone about Lenny and the vacuum cleaner. He told everyone when Lenny fixed the toaster, too.

Lenny felt the satisfaction of understanding something in his mind and making it become real with his own hands. Multiplied by the light and warmth of his father’s pride. He started fixing things right and left. His metamorphosis from bookworm to gearhead was swift and complete, and he didn’t look back.

It could have gone another way. Some perceptive science teacher could have seen past Lenny’s shyness and how he was flustered by taking tests. But that didn’t happen.

The junior high shop teacher saw his abilities and appreciated them. He steered Lenny toward the vocational-technical track.

Debbie and Phil were sorted into academic, which led to college prep. Everyone assumed that whoever was doing the sorting knew what they were doing. It was all done scientifically, with grades and test scores.

Maybe it was some kind of tragedy that no one spotted who Lenny could be. Or maybe it wasn’t. Lenny didn’t need someone to tell him who he was. A bird had flown inside his head. He knew how vacuum cleaners worked. And there were a lot of other things he knew.

He had started down a separate path, though, another path than the one his old friends were taking. It was hard to tell how far apart the paths would eventually veer. There were already signs of veering. No one in academic, for example, pinched snuff. Lenny hadn’t thought about that before, but he saw it now. He saw that Debbie and Phil had other opinions about it than he did. Phil was hanging out of the passenger side window, and Debbie had her shirt pulled over her nose. Lenny considered this. He was a considerate person.

“All right,” he said. He took the wad from his cheek and chucked it at the dirt around his mother’s petunias. But although he was stronger now, and more coordinated than he had been as a child, his aim was still lousy. The tobacco hit the side of the house with a wet, brown splat.

“Rats,” he said. He looked around for a rag, found an old T-shirt, and got out of the truck to scrub it away before his mother saw it. Debbie and Phil got out, too.

“I need your spit,” said Lenny. “Mine’s too brown.”

They got down on their knees and took turns spitting at the brown stain on the concrete foundation block. In between Lenny rubbed with the old T-shirt until the small brown splat faded and spread to a large pale one that was hardly even noticeable in the spring twilight.

“Hello!”
said Debbie.

“What?” asked her father, from under the kitchen sink.

“Hello!”
she said again.

“Hello,” he answered.

“That’s the first thing it says in the instructions,” she said. “Then it says,

Easy Basin Wrench with more quality and most quantity of every place. And is favored with the patronages of common sense and wisdom. The best for you and friends around the world.”

“Does it say anything about how to use it?”

“Let me see. It says,
Precise teeth are biting sharply the slippery oil to a grip.
Does that help?”

“Not yet. Keep going.”

“Jaws seek all position at pivot. The action can then be more skillful. Easily to put or also remove.
Who wrote this?”

“Someone who doesn’t speak English,” said her dad. He unfurled himself out from under the sink along with the odd-looking tool, and together they studied the instruction sheet. Fortunately, there were also diagrams they could be confused by.

“I like the way it sounds, though,” said Debbie. “Listen:
Always care to respect the tool, and it will serve you for indefinite years, even to your children.”

“That would be you,” said her father. “I’ll leave it to you in my will.”

They decided that Debbie, since she was smaller and more flexible, might be able to maneuver better among the buckets and cleaning products and pipes. After checking the pictures again and examining the mechanism of the basin wrench, she crawled in backward, like a crab. She oriented herself in relation to the pipes.

She put the jaws easily in position.

The precise teeth bit sharply the slippery oil to a grip.

The action was more skillful.

It only took a couple of minutes, and she felt respect, admiration even, for the tool.

Sliding back out, she handed it to her dad. She stood up and washed her hands in the sink while he watched the pipe below to satisfy himself that the dripping had stopped.

It was satisfying. Debbie considered, briefly, becoming a plumber. Showing up at someone’s door with the basin wrench, everyone so glad to see her. On the other hand, people would call on the phone in the middle of the night. She would have to get out of her warm bed and go mess with cold, slimy pipes in flooded basements. Wouldn’t she? And then there would be all those clogged toilets and drains.

“How about some bean soup?” said her dad. He emptied the can into a pot and mixed it with water while Debbie got out the cheese and crackers and ketchup and poured glasses of milk.

The basin wrench, back in its cardboard sleeve, was stashed under the sink, waiting for another opportunity to serve. It wasn’t in a hurry. It was made of heavy cast aluminum and it could wait for indefinite years.

T
he floor of the church basement was speckled green linoleum. Whitewashed ductwork was suspended from the low ceiling, which was held up at intervals by thick, round pillars made of something. A picture of Jesus suffering little children to come unto Him hung on a paneled wall next to an attendance chart spattered with foil stars. Outside the window, above the upright piano, the legs of passersby occasionally scissored from left to right, or right to left.

Somewhere inside these walls lurked the means to produce spaghetti dinners. Somewhere in the shadowy recesses there could be trays of cookies sprinkled with colored sugar, and cans of Hi-C waiting to blend with ginger ale and become punch in a cut-glass bowl, from whence it could be dippered into water-soluble paper cups. Somewhere there had to be at least some of those pastel mints. At the present moment, though, none of these things was visible. The only aroma in the room was of floor wax.

Hector opened his guitar case and lifted out the guitar. He was the first one there, but there was another guitar case sitting on the floor, and a circle of metal folding chairs, and the lights were on. So he was pretty sure he was in the right place.

A church basement was not where he had imagined learning to play the guitar. Hector had not imagined having the Presbyterian youth minister for his teacher, either. His mother had heard about these lessons, which were free, and his parents said that if he took the free lessons, they would buy him a guitar.

This was the danger of sharing your dreams with your parents. If you told them you wanted to learn to play the guitar, all they heard you say was, “I want to learn to play the guitar,” and then they found some practical, convenient, cheap way, often involving a church basement, for you to do it.

But Hector had not come up with any plan of his own. And owning a guitar seemed like an important stepping stone on the way to being a guitar player. So he pawned his soul and said he would take the lessons from the Presbyterian youth minister. What the hell, he thought. Or heck, he thought. What the heck.

Six people with guitars trickled into the church basement, not counting Pastor Don. Two were adults: a gray-haired woman named Mary, and Mr. Schimpf (“Bob”), who had been Hector’s pack leader the year he was a Cub Scout. Probably Mr. Schimpf was looking to be able to play songs around the campfire. Mary had half-spectacles. Hector didn’t notice much else about her, because his attention was drawn at that moment to two girls he didn’t know who had just come in together.

One girl looked as if she might be Hector’s age and one seemed older, maybe Rowanne’s age. The older girl told Pastor Don her name was Robin. Hector didn’t quite catch the younger one’s name. It almost sounded like she said, “Metal,” but he didn’t think that could be right.

Whatever her name was, she was pretty. She had a thick, careless braid of chestnut hair, a quick smile, and dark, merry eyes. She wore some kind of a fuzzy lavender pullover, and when she crossed her legs and lifted her guitar onto her lap, she had an interesting way of tucking the foot of the bottom leg back under her chair that made Hector feel melty. He looked away in self-preservation.

To Hector’s left was whose first name was Dan. Many girls at school were infatuated with his shallow athletic splendor and his golden handsome features that were biologically inherited and had nothing to do with the kind of person he might actually be.

Hector wondered what
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45 was doing there. Wasn’t there some sport that needed to be excelled at? He wondered if Metal was the kind of girl who fell in love with football players. He wondered if there was a kind of girl who didn’t fall in love with football players. He peeked at her over the rims of his glasses, his face tilted down at his guitar as if he were inspecting it. She was talking to her friend. There was a small brown mole on her cheek, half an inch from the corner of her mouth.