Finding the Worm (21 page)

Rabbi Salzberg followed Eric, and for the next half minute there wasn’t much to do except stare at the wrapped-up Torah at the back of the stage. You could hear Eric the Red retching his guts out, but you couldn’t see him or the rabbi. Eric’s mom stood up in the front row, but Eric’s dad got hold of her and kept her from rushing backstage. I glanced over at Lonnie, and he looked back at me and shrugged. I’m sure he felt bad about shooting the missile. But there was no way to know
this
was going to happen.

Quentin leaned over and whispered, in a low John Wayne kind of voice, “You shouldn’t oughtn’t have done it.”

That cracked up Lonnie and me, especially since it came from Quentin, which got the three of us another round of shushes.

Eric’s retching stopped, like I said, after half a minute. It was maybe a half minute after that that he stepped back onto the stage. Rabbi Salzberg was right behind him, his hands on Eric’s shoulders, steering him back toward the podium. After he got there, he looked up and muttered into the microphone, “I threw up in the garbage can. I’m real sorry.”

“That’s okay, honey!” his mom shouted, which made the rest of the congregation laugh.

There was a loud round of applause, and Eric began to smile. Rabbi Salzberg must have loosened the knot in his tie, because his throat had gone back to its normal color, and there was no sweat running down his forehead.

He looked down at his crib sheet, and Rabbi Salzberg pointed to a spot on it, and just like that Eric was off again, as if nothing had happened.

No one is razzing Eric about his bar
mitzvah. Sooner or later, of course, we’ll razz him until his ears bleed. I mean,
he threw up at his bar mitzvah!
That’s the kind of thing you put on a guy’s tombstone. But for the time being we’re laying off. It’s still too soon. Even so, Shlomo did get in a zinger after school on Wednesday, when Eric accidentally let go of the school bus doors while Shlomo was climbing down the steps behind him, and the doors slammed in Shlomo’s face. After Shlomo pushed open the doors again, Eric said he was sorry, and Shlomo shot back, just like Eric’s mom, “That’s okay, honey.”

Even Eric had to smile.

It was right after that, right after we got home from school on Wednesday, that we found out Quentin was back in the hospital. It wasn’t a total shock. He’d been sucking air for over a week, and then on Tuesday he got a hacking cough at school, and the nurse sent him home, and then he stayed home on Wednesday—so we knew something was up.

We went straight from the bus stop to his house after school. When his grandmother, who knows maybe nine words of English, answered the door and started to jabber in Yiddish, the look on her face told us where he was.

The good news is that the doctors got Quentin fixed up quick this time. They put him on a couple of new pills, cleaned out his carburetor, changed his oil, and just like that they were done. He came home Friday morning. Really, when you think about it, he only missed four days of school. Not even that much, since he got in two classes on Tuesday morning before he went to the nurse.

The bad news is that he’s back in the wheelchair. No ifs, ands, or buts this time around. He’s not talking his way out of it again until the doctors give him the thumbs-up, and he said they’re not even going to discuss it for a month … which means Quentin’s dad isn’t going to discuss it for a month, which means, starting tomorrow, we’re back to hoisting the chair on and off the bus, and
up and down the steps in front of the school. That’s just how it’s got to be.

No one feels worse about it than Quentin. He knows how much that chair screws things up for the rest of us. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like any of us are complaining. If Quentin can put up with sitting in the wheelchair, then we can put up with hauling it around. Except you can see how it gnaws at him. The guy’s champing at the bit, and he’s only been out of the hospital a couple of days.

I’m kind of amazed, to be honest, that his mom even let him go outside so soon. But Quentin can be pretty stubborn—like the time, a couple of years ago, when he was teaching himself to make a yo-yo go around the world. It took him a week to learn that stupid trick, and he wound up with a black eye and a bloody lip from smacking himself in the face with the thing. But you know what? He got it.

He came out this morning like nothing was wrong—unless you count the fact that he was rolling up Thirty-Fourth Avenue in a wheelchair. Eric was the first to notice him. We were hanging around on the corner of Parsons, the five of us, arguing about whether it was too early to ring Quentin’s doorbell, and then there he was, rolling up the block toward us. If you’d snapped a photo at that second, you’d have gotten five jaws hitting the pavement.

But once the shock wore off, what were we supposed
to do? For the next couple of hours, we just hung around on the corner of Parsons, yakking and arguing and flipping baseball cards. I mean, it’s a decent way to kill an afternoon, but like the song goes, it’s not “hot fun in the summertime.” Or even in March, for that matter. What made it worse was that the sun came out for the first time in a week, and the temperature warmed up to like sixty degrees, so it almost
felt
like summertime, and Quentin knew, even though no one said a word, that we were dying to head back to Ponzini. So he finally said, “C’mon, let’s
do
something.”

The rest of us just kind of stared at him.

But he wouldn’t let it go. “C’mon, guys, I’m sick of this corner.”

Except what was the difference whether we stood around doing nothing on the corner or in Ponzini? Plus, doing nothing in Ponzini would feel worse, because Ponzini was where we did stuff.

But Quentin kept after us, and when we wouldn’t listen, he got fed up and started to roll himself down the block in the direction of Ponzini. As he made the turn into the alley that led to the torn-down fence, he glanced back at us and shouted, “You guys coming or not?”

So we followed him back to Ponzini. There was a game of tag going on when we got there. Victor Ponzini
was running around, slow as molasses, and behind him was Mike the Bike, who’d left his bike at home for once, and behind him was Bernard Segal, who was doing something that you couldn’t even call running. He would’ve had to speed up to come to a stop.

The three of them, at that moment, were chasing Beverly Segal.

She was the first to notice us as we stood next to the torn-down fence. She stopped running, and then Victor caught up and tagged her, and then Mike crashed into his back, and then Bernard crashed into Mike’s back. It was comical to watch.

“Hey, Quentin!” she called.

He waved to her from the wheelchair.

“I heard you got sick.”

“Yeah,” he called back.

“You feel better now?”

“Yeah.”

The second “yeah” made him cough.

She looked straight at me. “Any of you clowns want to stretch your legs?”

Lonnie shook his head. “Nah, we’re just going to watch.”

“Have it your way,” she said, and then tore out. It took a couple of seconds for the other three to react, but
then, slow as molasses, they started chasing her again. For the next minute, we stood by the torn-down fence and watched them.

Then Quentin said, “Why don’t you guys get out there?”

“C’mon,” I said. “They’re little kids.”

“Beverly’s not.”

“Yeah, but she’s still ticked off at us—at
me
.”

“Then why’d she ask you to join in?” he said.

“She asked
all
of us,” I said.

“Then why don’t you do it?”

“I don’t feel like it,” I said. “None of us do.”

“C’mon, I’ll hold your jackets.”

“Quent—”

“Will you just go and do it!”

I glanced at Lonnie, and Lonnie nodded, and then the two of us pulled off our jackets, handed them to Quentin, and trotted over to join the game. Howie, Shlomo, and Eric followed a few steps behind. I felt real guilty leaving Quentin in the wheelchair with a pile of jackets in his lap—I’m sure the rest of them did too. But if you think about it, either we were going to feel guilty, or Quentin was going to feel guilty. That was the choice we had.

Plus, I’m not going to lie: it felt good to be running around, even if we were running around with a bunch of little kids. The sun was shining in my face and on the back
of my neck, and my skin felt warm, and my clothes felt loose, and my heart was pumping. I even let myself get tagged a couple of times to keep the game interesting. But I didn’t chase Beverly, and she didn’t chase me. We steered clear of one another the entire time.

It was maybe ten minutes later that Howie tackled Bernard Segal. Why he did it, who knows? Maybe he was sticking up for me because he’d seen Bernard poking his finger into my chest at Eric’s bar mitzvah, or maybe he was taking out years of frustration with Beverly on her kid brother. Or maybe he did it just because that’s what he does. Like I said, Howie’s a tackler. Whatever the reason, he’d just gotten tagged by Shlomo, and he turned and sprinted toward Bernard. Except instead of tagging him, he slammed into him and rode him to the ground.

Then he rolled off Bernard and said, “You’re it!”

Bernard sat up and crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t hurt, but you could see the shock on his face. I walked over to him and stuck out my hand. He looked up at me. His eyes had that wet look—when you’re not quite crying, but not quite not-crying either. I felt bad for him, so I said, in a low voice, “It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not scared,” he said, then forced himself to smile.

“Here, why don’t you tag me?”

He reached up and tagged my hand.

I turned and looked for someone to chase, but the game had ground to a sudden halt. Quentin had gotten out of his wheelchair and was jogging over to us. He jogged the entire distance, but he was out of breath. He coughed a few times. Not hacking coughs, just out-of-breath coughs.

Lonnie sighed real loud, like he knew this would happen. He said, “What are you doing, Quent?”

“C’mon, let’s go. I’m it.”

But he started coughing again. These coughs were deeper and louder.

“Quentin—”

“I’m okay!” he shouted.

Lonnie said, “Your dad said you have to use the wheelchair.”

“You never cared what my dad said before,” Quentin shot back.

“Well, I care now.”

“He only said I have to
use
the wheelchair. Well, I used it to get here. You saw me do it. He never said I couldn’t get out of it.”

“Look, you’re
not
playing—”

“You’re not the boss of me!”

“Put it this way,” Lonnie said. “If you play,
we’re
not playing.”

“Fine with me,” Quentin said.

“Have a good time, Quent.”

Lonnie started walking away. He headed toward the wheelchair, which was where Quentin had put our jackets. The rest of us followed a couple of seconds later. That left Beverly, Bernard, Mike the Bike, and Victor Ponzini. I heard Quentin say, “All right, I’m it.… C’mon, where are you going?”

I glanced over my shoulder. Beverly was walking away, and the sixth graders were following her. Quentin was standing at the far end of Ponzini, alone.

“C’mon!” he yelled. “It’s just a game of tag!”

Lonnie stopped walking and turned around. “That’s right. It’s just a game of tag. It’s just a stupid game of tag. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means something to me!” Quentin called back.

“You got out of the hospital two days ago. Give it a week, all right? We can meet back here next Sunday, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. We can pick right up where we left off.”

“Please, Lonnie!”

“No!”

“Please.”

The sound of his voice went right through me. It was like his entire life was riding on one stupid game of tag.

Lonnie stared him down. “You want to play tag?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to play right now?”

“Yeah.”

Lonnie started to walk back, and the rest of us just kind of stood where we were. It was hard to know if he was serious, or if he was going to grab Quentin and drag him back to the wheelchair. He walked past us and over to Quentin.

“All right,” he said. “Hop on my back.”

Quentin looked confused. “How come?”

“We’re going to play tag,” Lonnie said.

“C’mon—”

“Will you just hop on my back?”

“You can’t run with me on your back.”

“Sure I can.”

“Not fast enough to catch anybody.”

Lonnie waved for the rest of us to come back. “Eric, you get on Shlomo’s back. Bernard, you get on Howie’s back. Mike, you get on Ponzini’s back. And Beverly, you get on Julian’s back.”

For a couple of seconds, we weren’t quite sure if he actually meant it. We were glancing around at one another but not moving.

“Just do it!” Lonnie yelled.

So that’s what we did. You could tell Bernard didn’t want any part of Howie, but what could he say? The only one who grumbled was Shlomo, who thought he should
be on top of Eric, but Lonnie said we’d switch off after a few minutes.

It felt weird having Beverly climb on my back, especially since she wouldn’t look me in the eye beforehand. She just came up behind me, and I pulled my arms back, and then I felt her weight, and I grabbed the undersides of her legs. As soon as she was on my back, her hair fell across my face, and I got a whiff of her strawberry shampoo. I was going to tell her how nice it smelled, but I didn’t. It didn’t feel like the right time. Neither of us said a word.

It was only after he saw the rest of us going along that Quentin climbed onto Lonnie’s back. Then Lonnie walked over to me, with Quentin riding him, and stopped about a foot away. He said, “Well, Quent?”

“Well, what?” Quentin said.

“Don’t you have something you want to say?”

The light went on in Quentin’s eyes. He reached out and tagged Beverly’s shoulder. “You’re it!”

Lonnie turned and ran off. I just stood there, getting used to the extra weight, until Beverly grabbed me by the hair and gave a soft tug. “Are you going to giddyup, Seabiscuit?”