Double-Dare O’Toole (5 page)

He studied the bare spots where long strips of wallpaper were missing. Jerry and he had peeled the strips off when they hadn't had anything else to do. Sometimes it was hard work, peeling off wallpaper. The one who managed to pull off the longest unbroken strip won. There'd been discussions of new wallpaper down the years, always rejected as being too expensive.

“We'll wait until they go to college,” Mr. O'Toole had decided. “By then they'll be too old for the clowns anyway.”

Little did he know. They were too old for the clowns right now.

Fex lay looking at the balloon-like faces with great fat pink cheeks. Maybe they all had the mumps. He wondered if he'd ever liked that wallpaper, even when he was little. He thought probably not. Jerry said that wallpaper gave him the creeps. “All those faces watching me,” he'd complained to Fex. “Night and day they're up there, giving me the eyeball. I'd like to push 'em through to the other side of the wall.” But he never had.

The sun finally popped out from behind the early morning clouds. Fex threw on some jeans and a T-shirt and slipped out into the day, careful not to disturb anyone. He loved being out in the morning alone. No people, no cars, no nothing. He always hoped he might see a deer. Possible but not probable in this part of the world.

It was going to be a perfect day. The air was sparkling, filled with the promise of joy. He would make it a joyous day. No matter what. It was as if he were alone in the world.

Except for Charlie. Early as it was, Charlie Soderstrom was there, squatting on his haunches by the edge of the river, muttering to himself. Fex slithered down the side of the hill, leaving snail tracks on the grass as he made his way through the heavy dew.

“Hi,” said Charlie. “I saw a fish.”

“Go get some clothes on before you freeze to death,” Fex said. Charlie's bare stomach poked out over the elastic of his underpants. They and a sock were all he had on.

“O.K.,” he said and churned across the yard to his house. Fex liked to watch him run. He seemed to move up and down more than forward, but he got where he was going, which was what counted.

Presently Charlie returned, carrying a bunch of stuff. “Want some help?” Fex asked.

“No!” Charlie bellowed. He thrashed around inside his sweater for a while and finally figured out where he should put his head and his arms. “See, I told you I could do it myself!” he crowed triumphantly.

“Not bad. Not half bad. Now why don't you see if your mother's got any good grub to eat?” Fex suggested.

“O.K.,” Charlie said. Fex lay back on the grass to wait for him.

Am I powerless in the grip of an obsession, the way Angie said? he asked himself. And answered, truthfully, I don't know. If only I lived in the olden days, he thought, as he often had. Not so much hassle. No obsessions, no pollution. Life was easier then. Reading by candlelight, no staying after school, no talk of “putting out” and “getting any.” Horses instead of cars. I bet those guys never heard of a double-dare. And if they did, they'd flatten the guys who double-dared 'em. Boy, those were the days.

You take Johnny Tremain. Or Uncas. Or Rolf in the Woods. Fex sat up and thought about spearing fish for breakfast, about catching and skinning muskrats to sell the skins. That was the way to live. Those guys had it made.

He watched as Charlie struggled toward him, carrying a large load of things he'd taken from his mother's kitchen. Maybe I should help him, Fex thought. No. On second thought, let him do it on his own. It's the only way he'll learn.

9

“Mrs. Timmons, I have a dentist's appointment today. My mother made it a long time ago,” Fex said. “Can I start Monday instead?”

“Why”—Mrs. Timmons looked up from her typewriter—“I don't know why not. He isn't in yet, but the minute he gets here, I'll ask him. Can you stop back in about an hour?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“I'm sorry about the whole thing, Fex.” Mrs. Timmons grabbed for her pencil, which seemed to grow behind her ear. She worried it around in her hair like a dog with a bone. “I was the one who said I'd seen you coming from the office yesterday. That's how Mr. Palinkas knew it was you who'd put the drawing there. I suppose I shouldn't have said I'd seen you.”

“If you saw me, you saw me,” Fex said. “It doesn't matter.”

“Yes, it does,” she said. “It matters to me. I hate to see you in trouble, Fex. Why did you do such a senseless thing?”

“I don't know,” Fex said.

“Next time you're tempted to do something foolish, think twice.” She pushed her chair away from her desk and stood up. “Mr. Palinkas is a good man, a good principal. He cares about all you kids. He doesn't need to be paid back in insults and childish pranks.”

The door opened. Mr. Palinkas came in. He raised his eyebrows and poked his stick in Fex's direction. “I said after school, not before.” He took off his gray hat, which always looked as if he'd sat on it, and hung it on a hook. “Good morning, Mrs. Timmons,” he said.

Mrs. Timmons laid her hand on Fex's shoulder. “He has a dentist's appointment today that his mother made some time ago, and he wondered if he could start work on Monday.”

“You tell 'em why you have to stay after school?” Mr. Palinkas punctuated his words with little jabs of his stick.

“Yes,” Fex said, forgetting the “sir.”

“How'd they feel about it?”

“My mother was upset. She said it was dumb.”

“How about your father?”

“I didn't tell my father. Just my mother. My father gets really sore when he hears I did something like that. So I didn't tell him,” Fex said, his voice belligerent. At least I'm not lying, he wanted to say. At least I'm telling you the truth. I could've lied. Give me credit for that.

Mr. Palinkas nodded. “You've done this kind of thing before, then?” he asked.

“Well, not exactly. But a couple of times when kids dared me, I've done some dumb things, and that really makes him mad.”

He hadn't meant to say that about someone daring him. But it was out. He couldn't call it back.

“Did someone dare you to put that picture on my desk?” Mr. Palinkas seemed genuinely interested.

“Yes, sir.” If he asks me who, I won't tell him, Fex decided.

“I see.” Mr. Palinkas sat down heavily in his big swivel chair. “It's not a new concept, you know. Daring people to do things you don't dare to do yourself.”

“I suppose not.” Fex had never thought of it quite that way. But that was true. Barney dared him to do things he wouldn't dare to do himself. That put things in a different light. As Audrey would say, he was a fall guy. A first-class jerk of a fall guy.

“It's a coward's trick. It always amazes me to realize how many cowards there are around. The world's full of them.” Mr. Palinkas took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and snapped it on and off several times.

“Gave it up,” he said. “I'm trying to stick to it. But it isn't easy. Not at all. Don't know if I can do it. My wife gives me a hard time. She hates the smell of cigarette smoke. Says I should have enough strength of character to quit for good.” Again he snapped his lighter. “I've given up smoking three times,” he told them, shaking his head. A small silence fell on the room.

“It's all right, is it then, Mr. Palinkas, if Fex starts Monday?” Mrs. Timmons said in a bright voice.

“Yes, it's all right. Monday's fine.” Mr. Palinkas pulled at his nose, then looked down at his jacket and brushed at it as if he'd spilled something on himself.

There didn't seem to be anything more to say.

Mrs. Timmons nodded to Fex. “See you then,” she said.

“Thank you,” Fex said. “Thanks a lot.” He backed out and stumbled over the doorsill.

Mr. Palinkas looked up.

“Better watch your step,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Fex turned and ran.

10

Long ago, when he'd been small enough to fit neatly under his mother's arm as she read to him before bedtime (and sometimes she read to him in the middle of the day, for no reason at all), she'd read him a tale about a baby who had been born under a cabbage leaf. Left there by the fairies, the baby had been picked up, nourished, and cared for by an old couple with no children of their own. When this cabbage leaf baby became a man, he was good and noble and did all sorts of good and noble things.

At times, Fex liked to think that he too had been born under a cabbage leaf. It seemed to him a quaint and original way to come into the world. Never mind the tiny bracelet made of blue beads, reading “O'Toole,” which his mother assured him had once fitted around his wrist as he lay in the hospital nursery—placed there by diligent nurses so he wouldn't get mixed up and go home with the wrong family.

Never mind the birth certificate stating that one Francis Xavier O'Toole, sex male, had been born on June 27 at 1:50
P.M.
That struck him as odd. He'd always understood that babies arrived in the middle of the night. But there it was: 1:50
P.M.
The sun had been shining brightly, his mother said, on the day he was born. People were going to the movies at 1:50
P.M.
Or coming back from lunch. Or standing up in English class trying to remember the poem they were supposed to have memorized the night before.

There was a picture on his father's dresser of Pete, aged three and a bit, and an ancient girl cousin, at least ten years old, holding him, Fex, a wizened, wrinkled baby, up for the camera's inspection—holding him as if he were a bomb that might go off at any minute. Passing him back and forth between them as if he were a football.

No cabbage, leaf baby ever got that kind of treatment.

He didn't look like anyone. Not his mother, who was fair with blue eyes. People were always saying Jerry looked like her. When he heard that, Fex pushed down the terrible pangs of jealousy he felt. He longed for someone to say that he, Fex, looked like his mother. Was, in fact, the image of her. No one ever did.

And he certainly didn't resemble his father, who looked rather like pictures Fex had seen of Abraham Lincoln. Fex thought his father was cool looking. He wished he looked like him. And he didn't even look like his brothers. Not Jerry the violinist with the face of innocence and sweetness that made him the old ladies' darling. And not Pete, who was tall for his age, good-looking and filled with aggressive self-confidence. Pete had curly brown hair and had never wondered for a moment where he was going, who he was. Things would most likely turn out the way he'd planned them for the simple reason that Pete wouldn't have it any other way. People like Pete had a head start on life, Fex figured. Pete was off and running before he, Fex, had even warmed up.

They had never been friends, he and Pete. Sometimes Fex thought they weren't really brothers at all. Weren't even related to each other. That's when he pulled the cabbage leaf theory out and examined it. Suppose those little blue beads that spelled out his name were lying. Suppose in the night someone had sneaked into the hospital nursery and switched the bracelets and he was really someone else. Stranger things have happened. All you had to do was read the newspapers and you'd know that.

If I could pick my family, Fex thought, I'd keep my mother and father, and I'd trade in Pete. Maybe for Audrey. And keep Jerry, of course. Even with his practicing, I'd hang on to Jerry.

These were the things he sometimes thought about. Along with lots of other things. But when he was about to dip into sleep, thoughts swirled through his head that he couldn't always remember the next day. It infuriated him, especially when he knew they'd been exciting or original ideas or mind pictures which, if he could only bring them back into focus, might be worth keeping. Once, for instance, he'd slipped over the edge of sleep just as he saw himself, perfectly clearly, dressed in a red uniform with brass buttons and a steel helmet that glinted in the sun. People were lined up on either side as he rode his magnificent black stallion into town. Girls threw rose petals in his path, and shouts of “O'Toole! O'Toole!” rang in his ears. That had definitely been worth pursuing.

Suddenly, unbidden, lines from one of his father's favorite poems, one he sometimes recited, came to Fex's mind.

“I am the master of my fate,” the poem went, “I am the captain of my soul.” He thought about that. The captain of my soul. That would be nice—to be the captain of your own soul. He wondered how a person managed that. For one thing, if he wanted to achieve it, he'd have to give up on the double-dare stuff.

When had it started? Why? He thought back to the first time. He'd been five. They'd been in the five-and-ten shopping for stuff the day before Easter. The store was crowded with people buying candy and baskets and straw hats. Out of the blue, Pete had dared him to walk down the center aisle of the store on his hands. He'd just learned how to walk on his hands and was very proud of himself. He'd done pretty well, falling down only when he got to the notions counter. He remembered the look on his mother's face as she turned to see what all the noise, the applause, the commotion was about. Even the manager of the store had joined in on the applause. It was a wonderful moment.

“Little showoff,” Pete had muttered. That had been the beginning. Fex couldn't let go. He liked to make people laugh. He felt important. From then on, Fex was hooked. Kids found out and double-dared him to do crazy things, dangerous things. Once he'd jumped off the jungle gym at school when a kid dared him, and he'd broken his collarbone. Another time when he was about eight, a gang of kids had been down by the river. It was March, and the ice that had formed during the cold winter was thin. They had thought they could see fish swimming underneath. A kid had said, “Double-dare you, Fex, to walk on that ice,” and, not even thinking, he'd started across to the other side. The ice was green and gray, and it creaked under his feet. He'd almost made it. Then the ice had given way with a kind of creaking sigh, throwing him into water so cold he couldn't even cry out. The kids standing there on the shore, watching him, were scared. A couple of them ran away. But luck was with him. A man in a truck heard the others hollering for help, and he stopped and ran down to the riverbank carrying a large, stout rope from his truck. Fex caught the rope on the first try, and the man hauled him to safety.