Sons from Afar (24 page)

“But it didn't take the horses long to feel that there was somebody different holding the reins. They could feel how weak he was and how inexperienced. And they started to run wild. The more they ran wild, the more they ran wilder, if you know what I mean. Phaëton couldn't stop them, no matter how hard he pulled on the reins. The horses just went where they wanted to. They went up high and then they just—rushed down, really close to the earth, and where they came close they scorched the land, burning up forests and drying up rivers—destroying towns and people, too. They went sideways, zigzagging across the earth, and nobody knew what was going on because the sun had gone crazy. They went way up, and then down. Phaëton couldn't do anything about it, he couldn't even begin to control them. Things were pretty bad. So Zeus—remember, he's the king of the gods?—heard the commotion. He saw what was happening. I guess he was probably pretty angry at Apollo, and Apollo had to go along with what Zeus said because Zeus was the king. Zeus had to stop the destruction, because he was king. So he fired off a thunderbolt, and killed Phaëton, right there in the chariot. He just blew Phaëton away. Then Apollo got in and got the horses back under control, and things got back to normal. But Phaëton was dead.”

That was the end. It took people a few seconds to realize that. Then, Miss Karin said, “Thank you, Sammy. Are there any questions?”

Sammy waited. He didn't know if he wanted any questions or not. He was thinking: He'd rather have gone back and tried to do a better job of telling the end of the story. He could see it happening, but the way he'd told it wasn't anything like what he could see. He could see the terrified boy, and the blinding gold ball, and the spittle flying back from the horses' mouths. And Zeus, cool and sad, with the thunderbolt in his hand and Apollo, wise and sad, beside him. And Phaëton's mother, watching up from below. He could see it but he hadn't said it. He was also thinking: if he were like Phaëton with wanting to be an astronaut, which was kind of like driving a chariot across the sky, except your ship would go across space skies. Sammy realized that he didn't know why the idea of being an astronaut was so appealing to him.

Ernie's hand went up. “I guess that Phaëton guy was a bastard, hunh?”

A few snickers greeted his boldness, and people waited to hear Miss Karin say something, which she chose not to. Sammy didn't say anything either—it wasn't a question, it was a way to get to say something you weren't supposed to say. Sammy just looked at Ernie. And what was so wrong with being a bastard, anyway. Not every mother got married, as he had reason to know. Did Ernie know that, and was he trying to get at Sammy? Because, Sammy stared on, if that was the case, it was time Ernie learned better. Maybe Momma should have gotten married, and he didn't know why she didn't except he figured it was his father's fault if she didn't want to, but he wasn't going to let anybody say things about her. Maybe there was something wrong with her that she didn't get married, but he didn't think so.

Ernie's eyes dropped as the silence built louder.

“Are there any other questions?” Miss Karin asked.

“I want to know how they could believe the sun was a chariot
that got driven across the sky,” Custer asked. “It doesn't even look like a chariot. And besides, it isn't the sun that moves around the earth, the earth rotates around the sun.”

“People used to think the earth was flat,” Miss Karin reminded them. “Remember, the way everyone thought Columbus would sail off the edge of the world? It wasn't until Galileo invented the telescope that people understood that the earth does in fact revolve around the sun.”

“Besides,” Sammy added, “if you imagine it, doesn't it make sense? If you just look at the sky, the way it looks like a bowl upside down over the earth, and the sun goes up one side and then down the other.”

“I guess,” Custer said.

“Does the girl's name Diana come from the goddess of the moon?” a girl named Diana asked.

“I think,” Sammy said.

“So I'm named after a goddess. Neat,” Diana said.

“I thought,” Chris asked, “that the god of war was a man. You said it was a goddess of war.”

“There were two kinds of war,” Sammy explained. “There still are, I guess. The male god, Ares or Mars, was the god of offensive war, when you go out to conquer territory or something. The goddess was Athena, or Minerva, and she was goddess of defensive war, when somebody was attacking your home. That's different.”

“Did anyone ever think,” Shirley asked, “if maybe what really happened was that a comet came close to the earth? A comet's tail could really burn the earth, all those particles and things, and heat. Did anyone say that's what might have actually happened? And it got turned into a story.”

“Not that I read,” Sammy said. Shirley was the smartest girl in the class and that was an interesting question. “But I guess it
could have. You mean if myths might have some basis in reality? Except the story gets changed around. Like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and saying he couldn't tell a lie. That probably didn't happen, but probably something like it did?” Shirley nodded, and chewed on her hair. But why should she look embarrassed?

“I don't understand, Miss Karin,” Pete asked. “Is it a report if you just tell a story?”

A number of voices seconded the objection. Sammy didn't know what to say: Was Pete trying to get him in trouble? Even if Sammy had thought that a report someone made didn't meet requirements, he wouldn't have said so to the teacher. But why should Pete want to make Sammy look bad? Pete had been one of the first to give his report, and it wasn't very good but that was because he hadn't worked very hard on it. Sammy didn't understand, and he didn't understand Pete, and he didn't understand why people were agreeing with Pete. He looked at Miss Karin, where she sat at her big wooden desk.

“That depends,” she answered, “on what story you tell, and why you tell it.”

“Because you didn't tell us we could do that,” Pete continued stubbornly.

There were more, and louder, murmurs of agreement. Sammy thought, he didn't know anything about these supposed friends of his. He'd done something wrong, he could feel that they were thinking that; they were thinking he was getting away with something. And they didn't want him to get away with it. He stood up there, in front of everyone, feeling that.

“Where did you learn all that stuff, about the gods and all?” Tom asked Sammy.

“We've got books at home. My grandfather had a lot of books, I guess he used to read about it,” Sammy said. He didn't know
anything about his grandfather, either, he thought. That was funny, the way Gram almost never talked about him; even when she did, then she didn't say anything good. His father, his grandfather, that Uncle John—the only one she ever talked about was Bullet, and then not much. What was wrong with the Tillerman men? But he couldn't stand up there, thinking private thoughts in front of everybody.

“Sammy?” Shirley had another question. “Why did Apollo let his son drive the chariot? I don't understand that. He knew—he must have known what would happen. I mean, he was a god, and you said of prophecy, so he knew the future. He must have known Phaëton couldn't control the horses. Didn't he? So he shouldn't have let him do it. He should have stopped him.”

“Or gone with him,” Robin suggested.

“He promised,” Sammy explained. “He'd sworn by the Styx.”

“Yeah, well, my father makes a lot of promises. That doesn't mean he keeps them,” Jason said.

“But he was a god,” Sammy argued. “The gods can't just break their word.”

“My father thinks he's God, if you ask me,” Ernie cracked. “Doesn't everybody's? Doesn't yours?” he asked Sammy, grinning at him.

Sammy couldn't answer. He had no idea.

Robin's hand went up. “What do you think is the moral of the story? I think it's that he should have listened to his father. Is that what you think?”

“I don't know,” Sammy said. “Because—once he'd made up his mind, Phaëton couldn't change it. He was just thinking about proving to the kids that he was really Apollo's son.”

“I think the moral is that he should have listened.”

“Maybe,” Sammy said. He didn't think it was as simple as that, but he didn't know why.

There were no more questions, but there was one more thing he wanted to say. “I don't know if anyone noticed, but it sort of struck me that in this story, the father is also the son, because Apollo is the sun.”

A few groans were the only response he heard.

The bell rang then, so Sammy didn't have to say anything else. They all dropped their evaluation sheets on Miss Karin's desk, and hurried out the door to lunch. The teacher held Sammy back for a minute. She was gathering up the sheets, and Sammy saw that almost no one had given him top marks. And he'd thought it was such a good report.

“I just want to thank you,” Miss Karin said to him.

Sammy didn't know why she said that.

“I've suspected—not that you gave me much reason to hope—but I suspected all year you could do excellent work, and this report was excellent. You really knew your stuff, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Sammy said, his eyes on the sheets. He almost wished he hadn't done such a good job.

“Sammy, you know as well as I do that these evaluation sheets are never—or rarely—much more than popularity contests. Believe me, it was excellent.”

“Thanks.” Sammy didn't know why he was feeling sorry for himself anyway, and he'd never thought he was the kind of person who did that. But he did do that about playing tennis, didn't he?—acting as if he wasn't going to be able to play with a tennis class next year, acting as if he couldn't wait until then, as if it wasn't fair that he had to wait.

“If the written report is nearly as good—”

“It's different, it's a straight report,” Sammy warned her.

“Good. Because I'd dearly love to give you an A on the project. How'd you like that?”

Sammy shrugged. He didn't know. “I never thought about it.”

That made her smile with her bright-mouth smile, and her eyes smiled too. “All right, Sammy Tillerman, have it your way. I'm just saying thank you for proving to me that I was right all along. There is one thing, though. . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I don't know Greek, but I don't think in the original language you'd get that sun-son homonym,” Miss Karin told him.

Sammy hadn't even thought of that. “So what?” he said.

“As you say. Okay, you're finished, you can go eat your lunch now.”

Sammy did as he was told, but not because she told him.

In the cafeteria, he went to sit with Custer, although he saw that Robin had saved him a place. He didn't want anything to change, he thought, taking his sandwiches out of the brown bag. He wanted things to stay the way they had been. He had a terrible feeling that they weren't going to, but he sat down next to Custer the way he had for years and years, as if things hadn't changed a bit. The trouble was, he thought, nodding his head while Custer said he liked Sammy's report, the way friends were supposed to whether it had been a good one or not—the trouble was that he would really rather have sat with Robin. But was that because he wanted to be invited back to Robin's house? Or because he felt sort of sorry for the kid? Or because he wanted to talk about the real moral of the story? Sammy didn't know, and he wanted to know. Not knowing made him feel helpless, and angry. But he didn't even know whom he was angry at. And he wasn't helpless, was he?

Ernie leaned over from behind him, his potato face grinning. “Hey, Tillerman, you never said whether your father thinks he's God.”

He was doing it on purpose. Sammy knew that now. Knew it for sure. Knowing it for sure made him feel good; it made things clear.

“Why it's Ernie, Mr. Baseball Expert,” Sammy started. He waited for the laughs to die down. He knew how to handle this. “I get the feeling that you're trying to pick a fight with me.” He grinned back up at Ernie's stupid face. He looked—he knew it—all friendly and joky, which was a lie.

Ernie hadn't expected such a direct attack. “Now that you're going to go getting smart on us,” he muttered.

“Do you remember the last time Ernie and I had a fight?” Sammy asked Custer, keeping his voice loud so everyone could hear. “I kind of enjoyed that, didn't you?”

Custer was laughing.

“He looked so cute with all that mud all over his face. Sort of like a pile of mashed potatoes with lots of gravy. Remember that fight, Ernie?” Sammy asked, still smiling away.

“I didn't say anything about a fight,” Ernie's eyes looked around.

“Gee, you could have fooled me,” Sammy answered. Poor Ernie, Sammy was twisting the words so he had to either fight or look stupid; he could almost feel sorry for Ernie.

“But if you want one,” Ernie's voice tried to sound threatening.

“Hey, sure. It would be fun,” Sammy said. Then he started laughing and his words came struggling out because when he thought of it, it just made him laugh. “As long—” he gulped in air, trying to finish—“as long—as long as you don't—fall on me.”

The laughter—Sammy's and everybody else's—drove Ernie away from their table to the far side of the big room. Sammy almost fell over, he was laughing so hard.

J
ames didn't know
what
had gotten into Sammy. Sammy was suddenly coming at him, and coming back at him, about their father. “Did he steal that money from Mrs. Rottman's purse? I bet he did,” he'd say, and “What about that gambling, do you think that was crooked? How would you go about fixing a high school game? Would you make a lot of money that way? Would he have been poor, do you think, would a candymaker have made much money?”