They file into the gym and seat themselves, as they rehearsed the previous afternoon, in the two rows of chairs that face the audience. Eighteen chairs, seventeen graduates. The empty chair is RJ’s.
Charlie allows his gaze to travel from the empty chair to Mr. Nydick’s face, now solemn, out the door to Sunny, who has shifted her position and is dozing in the sun, and beyond to the heartbreakingly blue sky and the tail of a kite.
Charlie wishes to be anywhere other than at the graduation of his dead brother.
Lindenfield is the smallest town in Monroe County. A total of eighty-nine students in grades K through eight attend Jackson Elementary School on Dean Avenue, which is the main road in town. Also on Dean are the public library, the post office, the dime store, the movie theater, two churches, a new Chinese restaurant (considered extremely foreign and somewhat suspect), the diner in which Charlie and RJ once ate an entire banana bomb (a concoction twice the size of a banana split), a hardware store, and the store Charlie calls the Everything Else Store because it sells everything not sold in the other stores, from underwear to lamps. On the county road leading out of town are a feed store, a grocery store, and two gas stations.
People who are born in Lindenfield tend to stay there. Charlie’s parents were born in Lindenfield and they attended Jackson Elementary. Since his first day in kindergarten, Charlie has marveled at the thought that he might be lying on the very same resting mat his father used (the mat looks—and smells—old enough for that) or holding in his hands a library book his mother once borrowed. When he started second grade, he savored the fact that his teacher, Mrs. Shucard, had taught not only RJ, but both Mr. and Mrs. Elliot.
Mr. Nydick is speaking now, talking about each of the graduates in turn. He mentions Jean Anne’s talent for home economics and Howard’s prowess on the Little League field and the lovely rhyming poetry Emily writes, and he’s getting closer and closer to RJ’s chair. Hugh Delroy is sitting next to the empty chair, and after Mr. Nydick reminds the audience of the time Hugh wrote a letter to the editor of the Lindenfield Journal protesting the rising cost of school lunches, he glances at the chair and his speech crawls to a halt.
Mr. Nydick removes his glasses and polishes them on his handkerchief, which he slips back in his pocket. He turns from the graduates to the audience, and Charlie decides that without the glasses his principal looks a little like a possum.
“The students you see here before you,” says Mr. Nydick, “have reached many milestones during their years at Jackson. Together they have learned to read, appeared in plays and pageants, and welcomed their parents on Visiting Days. They’ve celebrated birthdays and holidays, bid farewell to retiring teachers, and marked the births of sisters and brothers, many of whom are here today. And in September they will become members of the freshman class at Monroe County High School.
“They began this year, their final year at Jackson, as a class of eighteen students. And now,” Mr. Nydick takes the pause Charlie knew was coming, “now they are a class of seventeen. In November, we lost RJ Elliot.”
Mrs. Elliot reaches across Charlie and takes her husband’s hand.
“RJ,” Mr. Nydick continues, “was an outstanding student and a fine member of our community. We feel his presence every bit as much today as we did before we lost him.”
Charlie notes that nobody can admit that RJ died. He has simply become lost, which Charlie supposes is true in some way, because where is he? Charlie remembers seeing him lying on the ground under the fir tree, but not any time after that, even though Charlie ran for his mother and later returned to the tree and waited with her for the ambulance to arrive.
The day RJ died was not remarkable in any way. Charlie has read lots and lots of books and often, he has noticed, the day on which a character dies is, ironically, the only sunny day in a string of cloudy ones, or memorable because it’s someone’s birthday or a holiday. But the November day that turned out to be RJ’s last was not particularly sunny or cloudy or warm or cool. And it was not a holiday or anything special. The school bus had deposited Charlie and RJ, as usual, at the end of the lane leading to their farm that afternoon and they had been greeted joyously by Sunny as they approached the house. Their mother had had cake waiting for them in the kitchen and had asked how much homework they had, and when they convinced her that they could do it after dinner, they had left the house in a hurry. RJ had taken off with Sunny at his heels—as usual—and Charlie had crossed the yard to the barn. The barn, complete with stalls and a haymow, had once been home to a number of cows and one donkey, but was now a work space and the office for Mr. Elliot’s painting business and Mrs. Elliot’s egg-selling business. And it was here that Charlie had made his first kite. The day before, he had completed the last step. He had painted a griffin on it, carefully copying the creature from the GRI page in the encyclopedia, and now the paint was dry, and Charlie left the barn, eager to test his kite.
He ran past the henhouse, past the remains of the vegetable garden, and through the overgrown field, allowing the wind to jerk the kite aloft. Three times it crashed to the ground, and Charlie patiently rescued it and sent it aloft again. At last it sailed steadily, high above, flapping satisfyingly, and Charlie let out a shout, hoping RJ would see his masterpiece, especially since he had doubted Charlie’s kite-building abilities. But now here was the kite with its tail smacking behind, tied with rags like the tails of kites Charlie had seen in picture books, and RJ didn’t answer Charlie’s call, and that was a disappointment. Charlie was alone in his triumph.
Charlie ran and ran, reeling the kite in, then letting the spool unwind, and suddenly he realized he had let out too much string and far, far ahead he could see the kite wobble and dive. He stopped to catch his breath, bent over, hands on his knees. When he straightened up he began to walk through the field, following the string, winding it on the spool as he went, wondering where his kite had landed. He was approaching the fir trees behind the barn when he heard the sound of branches breaking and a cry and then a heavy, dull thud like someone dropping a sack of grain. Sunny began to bark and Charlie quickened his pace, because he recognized Sunny’s bark of alarm. He ran until he reached the trees, and there was RJ lying on the ground, Sunny at his side.
“RJ!” Charlie had shouted. “RJ!”
RJ was motionless. One arm was above his head as if he were about to catch a ball; his legs were bent as if he were running.
Later when people in Lindenfield spoke of the accident they always pointed out RJ’s heroism, but sometimes they also remembered to mention the speed with which Charlie ran to the house to get help. Mrs. Elliot, busy making dinner, had called the ambulance and then run back to the fir trees, back to where Sunny was now lying next to RJ, whimpering, her head nestled on his chest. The ambulance had arrived in fifteen minutes, but by then RJ had already drawn his last breath. He was taken to the hospital, but even before he was lifted onto the stretcher he was gone—lost or dead.
“. . . our hero,” Mr. Nydick was now saying. “For RJ Elliot was a true hero, a boy revered by his peers and admired by adults, an outstanding student and athlete, whose last act was a good deed for his brother. RJ was brave, selfless, smart, and true.”
Charlie can’t raise his head. His eyes are on the floor. He remembers RJ spending Saturdays helping out old Mr. Hanna on the neighboring property, RJ leading Linden-field’s Little League team to victory, RJ, who would have graduated first in his class, winning the county math prize. He also remembers RJ and Hugh trying out cigarettes in the haymow, and RJ sneaking out his window after the Elliots had gone to bed, and RJ at age twelve driving Mr. Elliot’s truck into the wall of the barn, all things to which Charlie had been forcibly sworn to secrecy.
“Charlie,” Mrs. Elliot whispers. “Get ready.”
Charlie focuses on Mr. Nydick. “So even though we lost RJ last autumn,” Mr. Nydick is saying, “we will remember him forever as a treasured student, classmate, son, brother, and friend. I would now like to award
RJ’s diploma in memoriam. Here to accept it is his brother, Charlie.”
For the last few weeks, Charlie has worried about this walk from his seat in the audience to the podium, worried that he will somehow get it wrong, and now he finds that he can’t cover the distance fast enough. He reaches Mr. Nydick in a matter of seconds, says “Thank you” when he’s handed the diploma, and hightails it back to his chair, handing the diploma to his mother on the way.
Ten minutes later the ceremony is over. The audience rises to their feet as the afternoon heat rolls through the windows in waves. The seventeen graduates let out cheers, the girls hug, the boys slap hands.
A small crowd surrounds the Elliots. Since Mrs. Elliot is crying, Mrs. Delroy puts her arms around her. Mr. Delroy pats Charlie on the back. “Proud of your brother, aren’t you?” he says. And someone else says, “His last act. Going after your kite.”
Charlie squirms away from the crowd. He’s the first to leave the gym and he squats in the dusty yard beside Sunny. He can’t help but think, as he fondles Sunny’s silky ears, that RJ was the one who named Sunny; that Sunny had, in fact, been RJ’s dog.
3. HENRY
What I Would Like For Christmas
1. Treasore Island
2. biagraphy of Jackie Robinson
3. any Hardy Boys books I don’t have, you can check my bookshelfs the books are in number order
4. dog
5. oil pants
6. baseball players autagraph any one will be fine
7. doghouse
8. sketchpad
9. everything for a dog
I hope this isn’t asking for too much. It isn’t even ten things.
By Henry
Henry read through the Christmas list. He had written it two years earlier, when he was nine. Even though the list was now completely outdated—and even though he found the spelling errors highly embarrassing—he had saved the list because he thought it was clever. And every so often he liked to take the list out of his desk drawer and marvel at it. He thought that leading off with Treasure Island had been especially clever. He had known that the request for a classic would appeal to his parents, both of whom were librarians. Not that Henry didn’t like to read. Reading had been his main hobby two years ago, and it was his main hobby now (followed by art and the study of baseball players), and he really had wanted to read Treasure Island. But mostly he had needed to grab his parents’ attention, wanted to be certain they’d read the rest of the list.
Henry thought that burying his request for a dog after several seemingly more important items (all books) was also very clever. Number 4—dog—had actually been the sole purpose for drawing up the list. And it was the main reason Henry had saved the list. He had wanted a dog for as long as he could remember, and two years ago was the first time he had included the request in a Christmas list. It hadn’t worked, though. He had received items 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8, but not the dog, the doghouse, or anything else for a dog.
Henry threw his covers back. He had awakened long before his alarm clock rang and had decided to use the extra time to write a new Christmas list, even if it was only October and technically too early for such things. However, he had thought and thought and couldn’t come up with anything he truly wanted, other than a dog.
Henry set the old list on his bedside table. He turned around, knelt on his pillow, raised the window shade, and peered across the street at Matthew’s house, which already had the feel of an abandoned tree fort. It was funny, Henry thought, how you could just look at a house and know whether anyone lived in it. Matthew’s family had moved out the previous afternoon—less than one day ago—and overnight the house had acquired an air of emptiness. And aloneness.
“Stupid Matthew,” Henry muttered.
Matthew had been Henry’s best friend.
A squeaking sound from the corner of the room caused Henry to turn around again. Hamlet had begun to run frantically on the wheel in his cage. His feet moved so fast that Henry couldn’t see them. Hamlet the hamster was what Henry’s parents had gotten him the first time he had come right out and asked for a dog. Hamlet’s cage mate, Carlos Beltran, was what they had gotten him the second time he had asked for a dog. Last spring when he had again asked for a dog, his parents had taken him to the shelter and told him to choose a cat, which he had done, and that was how Amelia Earhart had joined the family.
Henry turned back to the window and muttered “Stupid Matthew” again. Without Matthew, Henry had no one to walk to school with. He had no one to discuss baseball players with, no one to prowl the stacks of the libraries with, and no one to do his sixth-grade homework with. Matthew had been Henry’s best friend and his only friend. Having Matthew right across the street had been so convenient that Henry had never bothered to make any other friends. What was the point?
Henry glanced at his Christmas list, the new one. He had carefully written the numbers 1 through 5 down the left-hand side of the paper, but the rest of the page was blank. He looked at the old list again, and then he got an idea. He drew a line through items 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8. There. That should do it. Only numbers 4, 7, and 9 were left. Henry hoped he was making his point. He threw away the useless new list and folded the old one into quarters.
Henry got dressed and slouched his way downstairs to the kitchen. His parents were already seated at the table.
“Hi,” said Henry dolefully. He slid into his chair, rested his head against his palm, and with the other hand, extended the folded piece of paper. “Here.”
“What’s this?” asked his mother.
“My Christmas list. I was feeling sad this morning,” said Henry. “About Matthew and everything. So I thought I could make myself feel better by looking forward to Christmas.”
“Very practical,” commented his father.
“I’ll put the list right over here,” said his mother, and she placed it, still folded, on top of a pile of unopened mail that occupied one end of the kitchen counter.
“You know,” said Henry, “one thing every kid needs is a best friend.”
“True,” agreed his father.
“And I was thinking that a best friend doesn’t have to be a kid. A best friend could be a parent or a grandparent or, I don’t know, a dog.”
“Pets make wonderful friends,” said his mother.
“They sure do. Especially dogs,” said Henry.
“Who are you going to walk to school with today?” asked Henry’s father.
Henry slumped in his chair. “I don’t know. It really is sad, not having a best friend anymore.”
“What about Owen?” asked his mother.
“Who’s Owen?”
“Owen Henderson,” said his mother with some surprise. Henry’s mother was the librarian at Henry’s school, as well as the vice principal, and she knew practically every kid in town. “He lives right down the street. On the corner of Mountain View.”
“Oh, him.” Henry shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think Owen and I have anything in common.”
There were good things and bad things about living in a town as small as Claremont, which was where Henry had lived his entire life. Claremont was so teeny that Henry could walk from one end of it to the other (from the elementary school to the grocery store) in fifteen minutes, if he didn’t stop to peer in the windows of any of the stores in between. And he and most of the kids in town were allowed to roam around on their own as long as they looked carefully before they crossed the street. These were two good things about small-town life.
On weekends and after school, Henry and Matthew had explored every inch of Claremont. They knew the location of each store and business on Nassau Street. They knew the order in which the side streets crossed Nassau, each one beginning and ending several blocks away at the edge of the woods, the woods then creeping up the mountains that formed the valley in which Claremont lay. Henry had always liked the idea that, just by walking the length of his own road, Tinker Lane, he could travel from a forest and a mountain ac
ross Nassau to another forest and another mountain. He felt that he lived in a town and the country all at the same time.
On the other hand, simply because Claremont was so small, Henry felt that the possibility of his making friends other than Matthew was rather limited. Henry’s three interests—reading, art, and baseball players—had been shared by Matthew, but he didn’t think they were shared by the other boys in town, at least not in that particular combination. Henry had spent a certain amount of time observing his classmates and he knew that most of them, the boys especially, were far more interested in playing baseball than in learning facts about baseball players. And he didn’t know any other kid, boy or girl, apart from Matthew, who was methodically reading his way through the fiction section of both libraries (school and public) and who had a favorite volume of the encyclopedia. (Henry’s was D, since it included so much information on dogs, but he also liked T because of its fascinating photo of the damage caused by an F-5 tornado. Matthew’s was R because of Jackie Robinson. He didn’t have a second favorite.)
“Well, what about the other boys in your grade?” Henry’s mother now asked him.
Henry shrugged again. “It’s okay. I’m going to walk by myself. I’ve done it before. On the days Matthew was absent.”
Amelia Earhart ambled into the kitchen then. She came to a stop in the exact center of the room and sat down, curling her tail around her front feet.
“Did you know,” said Henry, “that a cat’s digestive system—”