Gentlemen (2 page)

All this effort put a lot of pressure on Mixer to have something cool, and he usually did. Mixer was liable to show up with anything at any time, because Mixer stole things. So now he took out this little folding knife from his pocket. It was small but totally sweet. He pulled the blade out and I could hear the little pop when it locked into place. All the good knives locked like that. The blade was maybe two inches
long, maybe not even, but you could see it was super sharp. The handle wasn't wood, like my crappy jackknife, but some kind of knobbly orange plastic. It looked like official emergency gear or something.

“And you know the best thing?” he said. “I can hide this bad boy anywhere!”

“Nice,” I said. “Sweet.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

I waited till he'd folded it and put it away before closing the locker, because I'd made that mistake before. I didn't bother to ask where he got it or if he'd gotten me one. Mixer didn't see himself as Wal-Mart or Robin Hood or anything like that. He just saw himself as a guy who liked cool things. Like, if you were thinking that's an awful nice watch for a dirtbag sophomore to be wearing, you'd be right. He got it at the town lake when some yuppie douche bag took it off to go for a swim. Opportunities like that were the main reason Mixer went to the lake, and why yuppie douche bags should really consider buying waterproof watches.

Anyway, we were thinking we might see Tommy at his locker, since it was just a few down from mine, but he wasn't there. Mixer looked over, shrugged, and went back to his side of the hall. I wouldn't see Tommy in Spanish, either, because he'd opted for some other “elective,” which couldn't've been any worse and was probably better, but I figured I'd catch up to him in English.

I'm Miguelito in Spanish—“little Michael”—because
there's a junior in the class named Michael. It sucks to be called Miguelito. I should be Migeul, anyway, then my name could be misspelled in two languages. Also, I was just not good at Spanish, so Miguelito basically translated to “wrong answer” as far as the rest of the class was concerned. I kind of had a problem with thinking the first thing that popped into my mind was the right answer. I did that in all my classes, but especially in Spanish, where the first thing I thought was often the only thing I knew. And classes like Spanish weren't broken up into levels, so it was pretty much everyone for themselves. My fault for taking it, but I thought it would be cool. I guess I was thinking like Zorro or something: El Bandito Mucho. I was wrong.

Spanish dragged on, like it always does. When I got to English, there was this weird setup in the front of the room, and Mr. Haberman had this twisted look on his face. He was standing in front of a blue plastic barrel and watching us file in, and I just was not in the mood for whatever it was he was up to.

The barrel was off to the side of Haberman's big hardwood desk. The barrel looked sort of familiar, but I couldn't place it and wasn't sure anyway. As for the desk, he'd told us more than once that it was his own, and you could see from two miles out that it wasn't like the flimsy fake-wood desks the other teachers parked behind. He'd also told us more than once that he didn't need this job, meaning he was rich or something, and that he could walk away anytime. Every time
he said that, every single one of us was thinking, Well, go ahead. Bones'd carved
Mr. Homoman
into the wood on the front of the desk, along with a picture of this bent-over little dude. I don't know if Haberman ever noticed.

Tommy's desk was empty, and I saw Mixer come in with Bones and we started talking, fast and low, like, No way, did they send him home? Do you think they suspended him, just like that, on the spot? We were all asking the same questions, and none of us had any answers, and people were coming up to us to ask if we'd heard anything, because we knew him best, but like I said, we hadn't heard squat.

It was pretty loud, and then Haberman banged something against the side of the barrel, and it made this loud
buh-DUMP! buh-DUMP!
sound and that was his way of telling us to sit down, shut up, and see what's up with the barrel. Once it was more or less quiet, he cleared his throat. He was a seriously heavy smoker. You'd see him out front, sucking down one cigarette after another between classes. I'd never seen anyone smoke that fast. He worked the thing like it was a straw in an extra-thick milk shake, and figure he'd started smoking at fifteen or sixteen, he'd probably been sucking ‘em down for thirty or forty years. So anyway, whenever he cleared his throat, it sounded like there was furniture moving around in there. Kind of made you cringe. Then, like always, he said, “Good morning, class.”

He said morning even though it was one class to go before lunch, but the clock said it wasn't noon yet, and so he said
good morning to us before class. It was this little tug-of-war he did with us. We wanted the day to be getting on and getting over, and he wanted to hold us right where we were. In Haberman's world, it was always morning, it was always some crappy Tuesday morning, and that was just the way he liked it. He would've liked us to respond with Good morning, Mr. Haberman, and I'm sure some classes did, but we weren't one of them. Some of us nodded at him but that was about it.

“All right, then,” he continued. His voice was sort of tweety and gravelly at the same time, like a bird caught in a cement mixer. That was the cigarettes again. He must've had a girl's voice once. Tommy, Bones, Mixer, and me, we all smoked, but not like that. We couldn't score that many cigarettes, first off.

“This book we're about to start is a particular favorite of mine,” said Haberman, “and as you can see, I will be going to some unusual lengths to attempt to teach it to you. I have a little teaching aid here to start with.”

I looked around, expecting someone to stand up. I thought a teaching aid was a person, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe that's a teacher's aid.

“What do you suppose this is?” he continued. He gestured toward the blue plastic barrel with his right hand, sort of sweeping toward it so that you could see the palm of his hand, like this was a game show and the barrel was the prize. It was the kind you'd use to catch rainwater or hold the sort of heavy-duty junk that'd poke through garbage bags. It still
looked kind of familiar. There was a little notch taken out of the lip of the thing, and I felt like I knew it'd be there, which would've meant I'd seen it before. But I couldn't think where that might've been. Maybe I'd just noticed that when I walked in.

“A barrel,” said Reedy from the back of the room. We didn't raise our hands in here, because sometimes Haberman would leave you hanging for a while, hand in the air, dick in the wind, before calling on you. I guess he was waiting to see if anyone else would raise their hand, but why would you do that if someone else was already going to answer? What are we, going to fight over it?

“That's right,” said Haberman. “It's a barrel. Can we all agree to that?”

It seemed like maybe he was insulting us. Of course it was a barrel. No one answered him exactly, but there were enough of those small noises that basically meant, Yeah, OK, that he moved on.

“And what do you suppose is in it?”

He held up both of his hands and shrugged his shoulders, and we could see that he had a piece of wood in his left hand. It was like one of those little clubs you used to brain fish once you hauled them onto the dock. That would've been what he hit the barrel with before.

I looked from the club to the open top of the barrel. You could see some blanket, dark wool and scratchy-looking.

“A blanket,” I said. I don't know why I spoke up. I guess I
felt like someone had to or he'd just keep at it. Also, I didn't want to just sit there and be insulted. I'd get into it with him, if that's what he was angling for.

“An awfully big blanket, wouldn't you say?”

“What?” I said.

“An awfully big blanket. It must be quite large to fill up this whole barrel. More like a tent, I should think.”

“It's not a tent.”

“Well, an awfully, awfully big blanket, then…”

“Something wrapped in a blanket…
then,
” I said.

“Ah, yes, I believe you are onto something, Mr. Benton. In fact, I will concede the point. It is, in fact, something wrapped in a blanket.”

“What?” I asked, because he was still playing with us, and I'd just as soon get this over with.

“Ah, what, indeed,” said Haberman. “Now we are approaching the heart of the matter.”

He paused now and scanned the room. If he'd made a point, I'd missed it, but he stood there to let it sink in, anyway.

“I'll tell you what I'm going to do,” he said. “I'm going to let each of you try to figure that out. What, oh what, is contained within this barrel, wrapped, as Mr. Benton informs us, within this blanket? It could be anything, so I'm going to let each of you investigate, albeit, in a very limited manner.”

We sat back in our chairs, slouching, trying our best to look like we couldn't care less, but I'll give it to Haberman, we were all kind of wondering now.

“You each get,” he said, taking a half step back and smacking the side of the barrel with the fish club—
buh-DUMP!
—“one whack.”

Reedy whispered something about the whole class whacking off and the back of the room cracked up a little. Haberman ignored it, just stood up there behind the barrel, a fish club curled inside his fingers with their yellowed nails and a weird smile twisting on his lips.

“Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?” he said, extending his right hand toward Lara, first seat, first row, and gesturing for her to come over.

Lara was one of those girls, not exactly fat but definitely pushing the envelope, who wouldn't be allowed to be a cheerleader at a less crappy high school. But she was one at ours, and even though it wasn't a game day, wasn't even football season, she was dressed like it: a short blue skirt showing plenty of her thighs and sneakers with no socks. Being a cheerleader wasn't a big deal here, like it was some places, just like being on our football team didn't put a crown on your head. The preppy types, chicks included, played soccer in the fall, and the hard kids didn't do sports, so that left the kids in the middle for football and cheerleading.

Lara wasn't exactly sure what to do. She just got up and stood in front of Haberman, like she was reporting for duty, and he took her hand and put the little wooden club in it. She tapped the barrel with it, super light, like it was made of glass. The wood just sort of plinked off the plastic. I was
thinking, How the hell is she supposed to get a read on what's in there from that? And sure enough, she had no idea.

“What do you think is in the barrel, Ms. Bialis?” Haberman asked. He called everyone by their last name. Hers sounded like a prescription drug.

Then it was like she realized her mistake, and she went to hit the thing again, harder, but Haberman grabbed the club from her on the backswing and said, “One per customer, Ms. Bialis.”

“Well, I don't know,” she said with a shrug. “Bunch of sand, I guess.”

So Haberman was all like, “A bunch of sand!” Super dramatic, like a game show host again. I watched a lot of game shows, because my mom liked them. Then Haberman put the club down on top of the blanket in the barrel. The club stayed there, sort of sunk in, so that told me something. The blanket was lying flat along the top, and it was not stuffed full. He turned around, picked up a broken stick of chalk, and wrote
SAND
on the board. Then he turned back around and said, “Mr. Biron,” meaning Max, first row, second seat back.

Max gave the thing a good whack and said, “A big watermelon.”

“Excellent,” Haberman said and wrote
WATERMELON
on the board.

It went on like that for a bit, Haberman writing down each guess, and then it was my turn. As I walked up to the
front of the room I was thinking that this was totally unlike Haberman. I mean, this was English class; the only props we ever had in here were books. I was thinking this was something that Mr. G would do, and I was wondering if Haberman knew we liked Mr. G and hated him and was trying to like steal some of his thunder. I took the club from him and weighed it in my palm, you could feel the sweat and grease on it from the other hands, but it was a good, solid club.

I glanced over at the guesses so far. A lot of them were types of plants: watermelon, tree stump, things like that. Bridgit guessed clay, which wasn't a plant but sort of had that feel to it. I was thinking something along those lines, and I hauled off and really slammed the side of the barrel. I hit a knuckle on the plastic and the club stung my palm, but I stood there real still, trying to read the vibrations.

There was definitely something solid in there, and then a little liquid give at the center. Watermelon was a good guess, but I didn't want to copy Max. Plus, whatever was in there was big. It was tough to get an exact read, but too big to be a watermelon, except maybe at the farm exhibits at the Big E. What did it feel like? And then it came to me.

“Meat,” I said. “Some kind of meat.”

A few of the girls were like, Ewww, and then there was laughter in the back of the room. I figured that Reedy'd probably said something about me beating my meat, so I gave him a look. He looked down quick, but I could see he was smiling, so I knew I was right.

“Meat,” said Haberman, as if he'd never heard the word before and he was mulling it over. “Very interesting.”

He wrote it on the board and I sat down. This went on for a while, burning up like half the class. It was sort of interesting at first, but by the time it'd snaked around to the last desk, we pretty much got the point. Finally, there were fourteen guesses on the board, one for each student, and Haberman was ready to settle in on a nice boring lecture. Sometimes he just pulled what he said out of his ass, but you could tell that he'd put some thought into what came next. It sounded planned out,
rehearsed
is the word.