speed of my hands when I hit the ball. He said they were like the paws of a
cat. He allowed as how he couldn’t do that himself, though he was mighty
strong. He showed me his biceps, arm wrestled me flat, but continued to
smile that distant, dreamy, admiring smile when he said my new name.
So I became his animal, his pet. I played without interference in
the concrete school yard. I got better and better. We won the intramurals
and, hitting with either hand now, I batted a fabulous .456. But, of course,
there was a price for all this freedom.
The first thing he asked me to do was simple. “Help me to learn
the geometry.” Simple, but also impossible. He didn’t have the attention
for it, the kind of attention that can hold one thing in your head while you
figured out how it fit with another thing. I told him that unless he could
do that I couldn’t help him. Often when we were having tests, I saw him
looking at me with a lazy, wistful bewilderment, but he never asked me to
give him the answers. I told him how bad I felt, and he said, that’s okay
Pawsy, just walk me home from school.
He lived on the other side of Pacific Avenue. I carried his books.
I read to him sometimes as we walked along. Sometimes he tested my
loyalty by asking me to splash through puddles, or to climb up a fence and
tell him what I saw inside. And the only times he’d get mad were when I’d
say, “Look, I can’t walk you all the way today I have to…” Then he’d squinch
up his mouth and narrow his eyes and I’d give in.
So now it was spring and Friday afternoon and the minute hand
on the round white clock with the black border had stuttered back and
staggered forward two or three times and the room was almost empty.
Father Brackendorf was out in the hall saying goodbye to everyone like a
protestant minister after church. Sister Violeta was erasing her spidery
notes from the blackboard and I was gathering my books and papers,
stuffing them into my briefcase, taking my time, while Danny sat in the
last desk near the open window, waiting, smiling his empty smile, and I
wanted to run home and drink ice-cold milk from the bottle, and eat a
peanut butter and jelly sandwich and change into jeans and go out to play
with my dog, or the kids on the block, and so I decided to have it out with
Danny once and for all.
When I got my stuff together, I walked back to where he was sitting,
cleaning out the initials he had long ago carved into the top of his desk,
Libros Libertad 