“Who is the richest person in the world?”
“What is the most popular food in the world?”
“What is the best-selling record of all time?”
“What is the most-read book of all time?”
“What is the age of the oldest person who ever lived?”
“How many kinds of life are there in the world?”
That question prompted Al to ask, “Is there life anywhere else in the universe?”
“Good question. What’s your name?”
“Al.”
“Well, Al, you may have seen movies about aliens from outer space, but they’re really products of someone’s imagination. Nobody has proof of aliens from other planets. However, many scientists think there must be some because the universe is a very big place, filled with lots of unknowns. So Einstein’s answer to your question is, ‘probably’.”
At the time, the thought of sharing the universe with other intelligent beings was scary for Al because they could harm us. But now as he relived this moment, he thought differently. How could aliens be any crueler than some humans have been throughout history? The terrorist attack on thousands of innocent people like himself in the World Trade Center that morning was just the latest example. Time and experience told him that humans posed the greatest threat to themselves, not beings from another world. At this point in his life, Al would have welcomed aliens from another planet because they could have been benevolent.
“I’m not worried about aliens,” boasted Billy Bensen. “My dad would kill any aliens before they do anything to us.”
“How would he know they’re aliens?” Al asked.
“Because they wouldn’t look like humans and they wouldn’t talk like us,” Billy said smugly.
Ring. Ring. Ring rang the phone on the desk next to Einstein’s teletype machine. The ringmaster picked it up and said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir,” before he placed the phone down and turned to the audience.
His face suddenly became very serious and in hushed tones he said, “It’s the president of the United States.” He needs to ask Einstein some important questions, so we’ll have to end this show now. Thanks for coming.” The ringmaster told the crowd before walking over to the keypad.
CHAPTER 23
A Special Gift
Al, Miss Weir, and the rest of the class filed out as the ringmaster chatted on the phone and Einstein’s teletype machine buzzed with activity. From there, they headed to the game booths on the boardwalk. Al couldn’t have been happier as the class walked with the Atlantic Ocean surf on their left gently rolling in on the shoreline. The beach was filled with people, young and old, having fun. The game winners’ shouts of joy, on their right, were contagious.
A year ago, at that same time, Al and his family had just been planning their move from Kentucky to New York. So much concern had filled his mind about all the changes and unknowns he would have to face that he had had a hard time falling asleep some nights. And when the school year had gotten off to a bad start with Miss Lemur and his classmates, especially Billy Bensen, his worst fears had become a reality.
But now, all that was just a bad memory. Al’s life had changed for the better once Miss Weir entered it. There was something special about her that Al couldn’t express other than by simply saying, “She is nice. She is a very nice person.”
Al’s big smile turned into a frown after he looked back at Miss Weir, who was trailing the class to keep an eye on everyone in her group. She was crying and Al was the only one to see her because he was the only one looking back. He stepped out of line and walked up to Miss Weir.
“What happened, Miss Weir? Why are you crying?” Al asked with much concern.
As she turned her face away from Al and wiped her eyes with a tissue, she told Al, “Oh, Al. Nothing happened. I’m fine.”
“But why are you crying?”
A composed Miss Weir looked into Al’s eyes and smiled. “Well, you see that little baby in the carriage over there, who’s being rocked by the mother?”
“Yes.”
“The baby is just so tiny and cute. Seeing the baby makes me feel very happy. So happy that it made me cry.”
“Oh?” Al said without understanding how something that could make her so happy could also make her cry.
“One day, I hope to have a baby of my own,” Miss Weir told Al before walking quickly to the front of the line to stop the class.
“OK, class. As you can see, there are many different kinds of games that some of us may want to play. Each one costs a ticket. We’ll split into three groups, each supervised by one of our adults. If you want to play Ring Toss, line up in front of Mrs. Barnes. If you want to play the water-gun race horse game, line up in front of Mrs. Hopkins. And if you want to knock down the milk bottles, line up in front of me. If you don’t want to play, you can watch.”
Al was first in line to knock down the milk bottles. “OK, this is a very easy game to play and win,” said the game barker as he demonstrated by tossing a baseball underhanded at the stack of ten wooden milk bottles. They all came crashing down off their pedestal. “A winner! See how easy it is? Just do that and get one of those big dolls or a baseball cap off the top shelf. Or knock them all down with two balls and get one of the smaller dolls, or a water pistol on the next shelf.”
Al had his sights set on winning either the baseball cap or the water gun as the barker handed him two balls. Al stared at the milk bottles as he bounced one of the balls in his throwing hand. He had a good arm for someone his age, which he used to throw from the outfield on his Little League team. This throw would be a lot closer than what he had been used to and required a lot more accuracy. Al stepped back, wound up, and threw as hard has he could. The ball sailed past the bottles and hit the back canvass wall with a thud.
“This kid has a strong arm,” said the barker. “He just needs to find the target.”
“You can do it, Al. Don’t throw so hard,” Miss Weir encouraged.
Her words echoed those she had had for him in class throughout the year, whenever he struggled to learn something new. They gave him a confidence that had helped him refocus and succeed in school. And now they did the same for his task at hand. But before he threw again, for some reason, Miss Weir’s tears of joy over a cute baby came to mind. He then decided that if he knocked down the bottles now, he’d ask for the smaller doll and give it to Miss Weir as a thank you for everything she had done for him.
This time when he looked at the bottles, a strange thing happened. The face of Miss Lemur was superimposed on them. He didn’t step back and wind up before throwing this time. Instead, he aimed and softly threw, hitting Miss Lemur on the nose and knocking down all the bottles.
“You did it!” shouted Miss Weir as she patted Al on his back.
“A winner! We have a winner!” announced the barker with feigned enthusiasm as he handed Al a water pistol. “Here’s your prize.”
“No. I want the doll,” Al told him.
“You’re the first boy who’s ever asked for a doll. Is it for your little sister?” the barker asked as he handed Al a little Raggedy Ann doll.
“No. It’s for my teacher,” Al said as he handed it to Miss Weir.
“Al. I think you should get yourself the water gun,” Miss Weir advised while being clearly touched by Al’s gesture.
“It’s for your baby,” Al said.
“But I don’t have one.”
“It’s for the one you will have.”
Miss Weir put her arm around Al’s shoulders and said, “OK. Thank you, Al. I think I’ll name her Annie. She looks like an Annie.”
“Annie is a good name.”
That was the last day Al saw Miss Weir, but she was the benchmark by which he had graded his teachers ever since.
As this scene from Al’s life slowly faded to black, the mysterious voice that he had heard several times during his flashbacks spoke to Al again. “Love and learning are both cho
ices and gifts. Choose wisely and accept them thankfully.”
“Who are you? Where are you? Help me, please,” Al implored. After a few seconds of silence, Al spoke to the voice again, “I did choose wisely at the time, and I was thankful, very thankful.” His words echoed in the silence and darkness that engulfed him.
CHAPTER 24
A Missing Father
Al wasn’t the only one with questions about his well being. His wife Helen, who hadn’t heard from Al since he had left his office over an hour ago, was now beside herself as she watched news reports on her home TV that showed Tower One collapsing over and over again.
“No! No! Oh God… No! Tell me this isn’t real!” she wailed at the TV as tears streamed down her face. Helen prayed harder than ever; God was her only hope now. In the midst of her anguish, her phone rang; it was her son, John.
“I still haven’t heard from your father,” she sobbed.
“Maybe he got out but his phone isn’t working, so he can’t call you. Cell phone service is out for many,” John offered.
“I don’t know. I don’t know… anything, except that God is with him!”
“I’m going down there,” John declared.
“No! It’s too dangerous.”
“I have to. Don’t worry. I’ll be alright,” John assured his mother. “I’ll call when I get there. My phone is still good.”
Meanwhile, after reliving his eventful second-grade year, even Al couldn’t tell you where he was now. He just knew that it was silent and dark at the moment.
CHAPTER 25
The Awkward Years
After a short pause, the silence and the darkness were broken by the words, “Do I know you? You look familiar,” and then by the view of a scene on a street in the neighborhood where Al had grown up, near Astoria Park, in Queens, New York. It faded into view as if someone gradually turned on the sun with a dimmer switch.
“No. I don’t think so,” replied the shaggy-haired fourteen-year-old boy with a strange accent, spoken in clipped phrases.
Al immediately recognized them both. The one asking the question was Al himself, about the time he had turned fourteen. The other was Phil Nichols, a classmate of his from junior high school. They would both be entering high school in a month.
“Yes, I do know you,” Al said. It was a few months since they had last met. In that time, it appeared that Phil had transformed himself into somebody else. “What happened to you, Phil?” a baffled-looking Al stood spellbound, gazing at Phil.
“Happened? What do you mean, lad?”
“Your hair, your clothes, your accent … you’ve changed!”
“”Oh, oh, yeah, man, the fab groove. What can I say? Don’t you dig it, man?”
“Dig it? Sure. I just bought the new Beatles album.”
“Cool. I just got a guitar, and I’m going to start a band as soon as I learn to play it. Do you play?”
“No. I just like to listen, and I don’t sing.”
“Too bad, man.”
As Al looked at this scene, the conversation he was witnessing froze as if he were watching a DVD and someone pressed Pause. As the picture hung there, Al reflected on that time, remembering that the Beatles phenomenon had exploded in 1964 around the world.
The Beatles had been loved, and people, like Phil, wanted to share in that love. Phil’s Beatle phase had lasted about four or five months, until he had assumed another identity. In fact, throughout high school, Phil had become someone else, like clockwork, about every four months. Some had called him nuts. Others, like Al, affectionately had nicknamed him the Chameleon. For Al, this encounter on a late summer day in 1964, Al’s first meeting with the Chameleon, was an unsettling experience.
“How’s your mother doing?” Al asked in an attempt to connect with the old Phil and out of concern, following the separation of Phil’s parents the previous year.
“Mum?” Phil responded.
Al couldn’t contain his confusion, which was written all over his face. But if Phil read it, he didn’t acknowledge it.
“The bird is flying low because me old man is hummin’ another tune,” Phil said.
“What? What do you mean?” a puzzled Al asked.
Phil paused before responding, “They’re getting a divorce.” This time his voice was the old Phil, no Liverpool accent. The only inflection in it echoed the pain that Phil couldn’t mask with his old voice.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Are you still going to live with your mother?” Al asked sympathetically.
“Hey, man! Why don’t you tell a bloke who cares! Who are you? Do I know you?” Phil seethed in his cockney accent before walking away. As Phil distanced himself from Al, he sang out, “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.”
That was the last time Al had heard Phil speak with his old voice, even though Al and Phil had had many conversations during their high school years. They had gotten along fine as long as Al spoke in the present tense and he didn’t challenge Phil’s current, ever-changing persona. Al enjoyed talking with Phil because he discovered that it was exciting to look at the world from different perspectives.
Al didn’t understand how or why Phil changed his identity the way people changed their clothes with the seasons. At first, the mystery of Phil’s transformations had bothered Al, but by the time their freshman year was ending, Al had stopped trying to find an answer. It had become another of life’s many mysteries that presented themselves during his high school years. And others, like figuring out the opposite sex and its hold on him, had had a higher priority.
Al’s freshman year of high school had been filled with anxiety, intrigue, heart palpitations, cold sweats, and mind-numbing risks. These conditions had not been triggered by the many academic challenges he had faced but from the times he had crossed paths with Helene Colangelo. She had also been a freshman, but from another middle school in the same district. Al had thought she may have also been an alien from another world because of the power she had had to control his mind and body. One minute, he’d be his usual confident self. Then, she’d pass him in the hall at school or on the street and he suddenly had become someone or something else. He couldn’t explain it.
But after watching zombies in a horror movie, he had immediately identified with them. Their mindless, blank stares and shuffling feet had captured how Al felt whenever he had encountered Helene. In the movie, aliens from outer space had used a ray gun to transform humans into zombies. At first, Al had thought she must have had a force field emanating from her that did the work since she didn’t have a ray gun, but he had noticed that he was the only one around her affected by it. Everyone else went about their business as usual. The only extraordinary activity he had noticed was that some other boys his age had followed her with their eyes as if they were magnetized.
“Do you have an extra paper?” It was a simple question that Al had gotten occasionally while delivering copies of the Long Island Star Journal on his after-school paper route. But this time it was different. Usually, he carried a few extra copies in case of emergencies and would make a quick ten cents from those random sales. But this time when he turned around to hand the paper to this customer, he was startled to see that it was Helene Colangelo.
“What’s the matter?” Helene said as she patted her hair to feel if there was something wrong with it in response to Al’s stunned face.
“Ah. Oh, nothing’s the matter,” Al said, trying hard to hide his uneasiness. “Here you go. You just surprised me.”
“Oh, hi. You go to Bryant High, too, don’t you?” she said as she handed him a dime.
“Yes,” Al confirmed as if he were about to say more, but nothing came out of his mouth.
“I’ve got a social studies assignment for homework tonight and need to read today’s paper. My teacher wants us to summarize three stories. One has to be national news, one state news, and one local news.”
“I wish I had that one. My teacher told us to write a one-page biography o
f the mayor,” Al said as he handed the dime back to Helene. “It’s a free sample. They tell us to give them out to get new subscribers.”
“Are you sure? My parents don’t read the paper. They watch the news on TV.”
“Sure. Maybe they’ll change their minds.”
“OK. Thanks, but I don’t think so,” she said with a smile as she walked away.
Al couldn’t believe what had just happened. He had been trying to figure out a way to start a conversation with Helene for months, but nothing that came to mind felt right. “Hi, I’m Al. What’s your name?” was no good because it required a string of follow-up questions that he would need to keep the conversation going and he really didn’t have any idea what to ask her that wouldn’t make him feel like an idiot. Rescuing her from something would be a great way to meet her because he’d create a good first impression, show her how brave he was, and how he could protect her. There was just one problem with that, though. Whenever he had seen her, she wasn’t in danger. She had been either smiling or laughing. The only thing he could have rescued her from was happiness.
CHAPTER 26
Follow the Leader
“Are you a man or what?” Big Frankie challenged Tommy as he stared into his hazy eyes.
Tommy stood there dazed, trying to figure out what to do or say in response, as Al and a couple of their friends watched. Al recalled the question had been top-of-mind for him at fourteen. He didn’t want to be a boy anymore. He wanted to be a man and for others to see and respond to him as such. He just wasn’t sure how to let everyone know that. It was pretty much the same situation for Al’s friends, so when someone like Big Frankie offered insights about how to demonstrate one’s manhood, they listened. After all, he was two years older and knew a lot more than they did about it.