You Will Call Me Drog (6 page)

“Well then, explain this talking puppet business to me.”

How? “Okay. I found a puppet and put him on my hand, and he talks, and he won’t let me take him off.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“No.” I pressed the speaker button and doodled a picture of myself on the notepad.

“Look, Son, use your head. Whatever you’re doing this for, it isn’t worth it. In fact, it’s a bad idea to let people think you’re—”

“Crazy?”

“I was going to say strange.”

“I can’t help it.” I drew branches growing out of my hair.

“You can’t if you think you can’t. Parker, there’s something I want you to do. Two things, actually. First, give yourself a deadline by which this ... thing has to be gone, and make up your mind that it will be—”

“Kind of like a wart?” I added a huge wart to my chin in the drawing.

“And second, I’d like you to sign up for boxing lessons and practice a little every day.”

“Boxing takes two hands, Dad.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

What else could I say? I handed the phone back to Mom.

Boxing again. The first Christmas after Dad left, he gave me a pair of boxing gloves and a punching bag. His idea of a present, not mine. Mom said he probably thought that without a dad around I might need to learn to defend myself. Trouble was, he never got around to getting the bag hung up in the garage. I put on the gloves a few times, but I never really used them, and after a while they got too small. Didn’t he realize that? It was almost four years ago.

Besides, I got along fine. Boys at school sometimes got mad at each other, even wrestled or shoved each other around, but then it was over. We’ve never had any full-time bullies. Sometimes guys from the military school on the edge of town came around acting tough, but that was it.

I paced the living room, waiting for Mom to finish talking.

“Dad’s always got all the answers,” I said to her as soon as she hung up.

“Well, your dad’s a reality guy,” she said. “You’re asking him to believe that a puppet talks.”

“No. I’m asking him to believe
me
.”
And you don’t believe me, either. You’re just trying to be nice about it.

“He’s probably trying to think what’s best for you.”

I punched the back of the arm chair with my free hand. “That’s what I mean! Everybody thinks they know what’s best for me. Why don’t you all just leave me alone? That’s what’s best for me!”

Mom frowned and took hold of me by the shoulders. “Parker, I am giving you a huge benefit of the doubt here. You say you’re doing as well as you can with this puppet business—”

“Right!”

“So I’m trying not to talk about it for a while, like Dr. Mann says, and let you work it out, but that’s not easy. Give me some help, will you?”

I never did like having her mad at me, but this time she wasn’t just mad, she looked really worried. About me. And whoever’s fault this all was, it wasn’t hers.

“Sorry I yelled,” I said. “I didn’t mean you.”

“You sure about that?” Drog said to me on the way upstairs.

When an adult you don’t know suddenly shows up on the playground at Monday recess, everybody thinks, “substitute.” But, if this guy was a substitute, why wouldn’t kids from his class either be hanging around him, trying to be his friend, or yelling and pushing each other to see what he’d do?

This man just stood off to the side, writing things in a notebook. He didn’t look much like a teacher, either. More like a guy who used to play basketball back when he had more hair. A bunch of us asked Mrs. Belcher about him.

“Oh, that’s Mr. Masterson,” she said. “He taught here a few years ago, and now he works for the
Western Illinois Times
. He’s gathering material for a series the magazine is doing on small-town schools.”

“You mean he’s going to write about us?” Wren asked.

“Not exactly. It’s more about the school. He says he wants to observe a typical school day. So just do whatever you would usually do and ignore him.”

But wherever I went on the playground, whether I was playing kickball with Gordy and the boys or just taking a drink from the fountain, the man went too, jotting things down. At afternoon recess, the same thing happened, so it was kind of hard to ignore him. If he wanted typical, he should definitely be ignoring me.

I guessed I could see why he would watch me, though. Writing about a school day had to be pretty boring, and most schools probably didn’t have a kid with a bald green puppet on his hand.

I just wished he wasn’t so interested. I could still play soccer and kickball even with Drog on my hand, and once a game got started, the kids kind of forgot about him and treated me as normal. I didn’t need them to be reminded.

“Don’t be a fool,” Drog said. “I know a spy when I see one!”

“Now I get it, Parker!” Wren said as our class walked back to the room from library period. “Now I know what you’re doing!”

“What?”

“This!” She showed me a book called
Voice Magic
and grinned like she’d just gotten an A in her worst subject. “You’re trying to be a ventriloquist.” Wren looks things up.

“Hey, man, what’s a ven ... quilotrist?” a low voice said from behind us. It was Big Boy, the oldest kid in class.

“Ventriloquist,” Wren corrected him. “It’s someone who pretends not to talk, but throws his voice to a dummy.” Her eyes pointed at me “I’m going to learn how, too.”

Great. Now she’d called Drog a dummy.

Big Boy looked confused.

“It’s kind of an act,” I said. “Somebody learns how to talk without moving their mouth. They make it seem like somebody or something else is talking. Like a puppet.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” Big Boy said. “It’s an act?”

“No. It’s not an act. I’m not making Drog talk.”

Big Boy shook his head and walked ahead.

“I guess you wanted to keep your secret to yourself,” Wren said. “But remember, we found that puppet together, so it’s part mine too. You should at least let me have a turn.”

“You didn’t want him, Wren, remember? And now I couldn’t give him to you if I tried.”

You got it half right, Wren,
I thought.
Somebody’s a ventriloquist here, but it’s Drog, not me.

Drog cackled when I showed him the picture I drew in art of a boxer, all beat-up and punchy with a bloody cut over his eye, and a man in a business suit holding up the boxer’s arm and saying, “That’s my boy.” Mrs. Belcher looked up. I didn’t turn the picture in.

I’d better watch it,
I thought,
or I’ll end up in the Big B.M.
Bradley Military Institute. Adults say it’s for boys who need more “structure.” But kids all know it’s where juvenile delinquents go, if their parents can afford it. It’s a well-known secret that the older cadets there set up torture chambers to “initiate” the new kids after lights-out.

Dad once asked if I’d like to go to Bradley, as if it would be a good thing. Maybe he liked the short haircuts. Anyway, I didn’t need him thinking of me as a kid who needs more “structure.”

“Where are you taking me, may I ask?” Drog said when I got on my bike and headed downtown instead of home.

“To the Y.”

“Y the Y?”

“They teach boxing there.”

“Boxing? You want someone to knock some sense into you? I could do that, and you wouldn’t even have to leave the house.”

But I wasn’t planning to sign up. I was just going down so I could tell Dad I tried.

The gym door made a kind of sucking sound as I dragged it open with my good hand. Inside, a class was finishing up. No kids, just some men with big wet patches on their shirts. It smelled like a bunch of old sneakers and wet dogs in there. I swallowed, went up to the instructor, and told him my dad wanted me to take boxing but I had a puppet on my hand that I couldn’t take off. My voice came out kind of high. I showed him Drog.

“What the—” the man said. “Sorry, Son, I don’t have time for this. Come back when you’re through fooling with that thing.”

Someone in the class called out, “I know, why don’t you try kickboxing?” and everybody laughed, including Drog.

“Why do you let men you don’t even know call you Son?” Drog asked.

I didn’t feel like getting back on my bike right away. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything, so I parked myself on a bench in the hall and tried to focus on my cheek mole. It’s on the right side, and if I look as far to the right as I can make my eyes go, I can sometimes see it without looking in the mirror.

Just beyond the mole I could see someone looking at me. Looking, but not staring. A tall man. Japanese. The guy from the library steps. With his white shirt and wide black pants tied around the middle, he looked like a figure cut out of crisp paper. His eyes said
hello
.

And then he came over and sat down next to me. “Are you waiting for someone?”

“No. I don’t know. I was trying to sign up for boxing.”

“Do you want to box?”

“No. Besides, I can’t.”

“Oh?”

I showed him Drog. “I can’t take him off.”

“That’s interesting.”

Interesting?

“And I can’t do much with him on.”

“I see.”

We were both quiet for a while. I could hear sneakers squeaking on the gym floor down the hall. Then the man said, “Some of my students are about to give a demonstration of aikido, a martial art. Would you like to see it?”

I nodded and followed him into a large room where a gray tumbling mat covered most of the floor. Some men and women dressed in loose white outfits knelt in a row on the mat with their hands on their knees, waiting. People in ordinary clothes sat in chairs on the other side of the room. The man in white and black led me over there. Then the kneelers all stood up and bowed to him and the demonstration began.

It was pretty amazing. One of them ran at somebody else as hard as they could, and the other person caught the attacker, tossing him through the air like a beanbag.

I tensed up, waiting for the thud, but the guy just landed and rolled and came up for more, like he enjoyed it. Several people attacked one person and the same thing happened. Then they switched and the attackers got thrown.

This must be some kind of stunt-actor training
, I thought. It was like those old cartoons where the characters run off the edge of a cliff and crash to the ground, then get up and dust themselves off. Cool.

After a while the man—everyone in white called him Sensei—asked if anyone had questions. The woman sitting next to me asked what everybody else was wondering,

“Doesn’t it hurt when you fall like that?”

Sensei smiled. “Not when you know how. Learning to fall is an important part of our training.”

He went on to talk about aikido and how it had a special idea behind it: that you could learn to defend yourself without getting hurt or hurting anyone else.

“Ha! How can they call it a martial art if no one gets hurt?” Drog grumbled. “Looks like ballroom dancing to me.”

When the demonstration was over, Sensei handed me a card. “If you think you’d like to try this,” he said, “come to the dojo any evening between five and seven. Beginners usually come at five.”

“The dojo?”

“It’s our regular martial arts practice hall. You’ll find our address on the card.”

“What about—?” I asked, holding Drog up.

Sensei looked into me and said, “He’s welcome, too.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Drog muttered.

“I think I found something a lot more fun than boxing,” I told Mom when I got home. “It’s called aikido. It’s a martial art.”

“Oh. Like karate?”

“Sort of. Here’s where they practice.” I handed her the card.

“Hmmmm, that must be where the old Montgomery Furniture store used to be. That’s not far from the library. When are the classes?”

“Every day at five. Can I go tomorrow?”

“Well yes, sure. Aikido, hmm?”

That night it was even harder than usual to concentrate on my homework, and not because Drog kept yak-king at me. I couldn’t stop thinking about those people in white rolling on the floor and throwing each other across the room.

If I had some clay, I thought, and if I had both hands, I could make some aikido figures. I drew a few instead, flying through the air. Smiling.

I got into bed and closed my eyes, focusing on my wood shapes. Spirals and rods turned into roots and branches in my mind, then came together to form a huge tree extending as far as I could see.